May 2020 Archives

May 22, 2020

Treasures from the Yale Film Archive: Willie Ruff Online Screening & Filmmaker Conversation

photograph of filmmaker Willie Ruff

Our final in-person Treasures from the Yale Film Archive event of the spring was an evening of film and conversation with musician and filmmaker Willie Ruff '53 B.M., '54 M.M.A. In case you missed it—or want to hear more—we're pleased to present another in-depth conversation with Ruff, along with the online debut of his 1981 documentary The Beginning of Bebop.

The Beginnings of Bebop takes us on a guided tour of significant locations in the history of jazz. Led by legendary trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, Ruff and his musical partner Dwike Mitchell visit Minton's Playhouse, Carnegie Hall, the former site of the Savoy Ballroom, and even Miles Davis's home for an impromptu stop.

Watch the Filmmaker Conversation (53 mins)

Watch The Beginnings of Bebop (26 mins)

Read the Film Notes

Both videos are presented with optional closed captioning, and both are available for viewing through the end of June, 2020. The Beginnings of Bebop was preserved from the original 16mm picture and track elements by the Yale Film Study Center in 2019.

What is Treasures from the Yale Film Archive?
Treasures from the Yale Film Archive is an ongoing series of classic and contemporary films in 35mm curated by the Yale Film Study Center and screened at the Whitney Humanities Center.

Post on May 22, 2020 - 5:53am |

May 15, 2020

Treasures from the Yale Film Archive: Frank Mouris Online Screenings & Filmmaker Conversation

collage of women's faces from a Frank Mouris animated film

Join Treasures from the Yale Film Archive online for a conversation with Academy Award-winning animator Frank Mouris, in conjunction with the online debut of his first four short films. Direct precursors to his Oscar-winning Frank Film (1973), these four films were made while Mouris was a student in the graphic design program at the Yale School of Art and Architecture in the late sixties. Mouris donated original materials for Quick Dream (1967), Coney Island Eats (directed with Peter Schlaifer, 1967), You're Not Real Pretty But You're Mine... (1968), and Chemical Architecture (directed with Peter Schlaifer, 1968) to the Yale Film Archive in 2015. Thanks to a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation, these four were preserved on film in 2016, and the new prints premiered later that year in a Treasures screening with Frank and Caroline Mouris in person.

Watch the Filmmaker Conversation (33 mins)

Watch Quick Dream (silent, 3 mins)

Watch Coney Island Eats (silent, 3 mins)

Watch You're Not Real Pretty But You're Mine... (6 mins)

Watch Chemical Architecture (3 mins)

Read the Film Notes

These videos are available for viewing through the end of June, 2020.

What is Treasures from the Yale Film Archive?
Treasures from the Yale Film Archive is an ongoing series of classic and contemporary films in 35mm curated by the Yale Film Study Center and screened at the Whitney Humanities Center.

Post on May 13, 2020 - 11:14am |

May 8, 2020

Missing Treasures: An Online Film Fest for Yale Students, Faculty, and Staff

Current circumstances have caused us to cancel several Treasures from the Yale Film Archive screenings, but that doesn't mean we can't continue to share Yale's excellent film resources with Yale students, faculty, and staff. If you're missing Treasures, please enjoy the streaming versions of select 35mm films we've shown in the series over the years, along with their original Film Notes. These offerings are part of Yale University Library's extensive streaming video collections.

Before you begin, please use your Yale NetID and Cisco AnyConnect software to join the Yale Virtual Private Network (VPN). If you encounter problems with the videos, try using a different web browser.

Within Our Gates (Oscar Micheaux, 1920)
Restored silent-era African-American melodrama
Film Notes

Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961)
High fashion and high drama in an isolated chateau
Film Notes

The Triplets of Belleville (Sylvain Chomet, 2003)
Animation, song and dance, and the Tour de France
Film Notes

The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
A gritty classic about Algeria's fight for independence
Film Notes

Volver (Pedro Almodóvar, 2006)
Penelope Cruz leads an all-star cast of Spanish women
Film Notes

Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (Errol Morris, 1997)
An offbeat documentary about four extraordinary characters
Film Notes

Un Prophète (Jacques Audiard, 2009)
A dark prison drama starring Tahir Rahim and Niels Arestrup
Film Notes

M (Fritz Lang, 1931)
An impeccable crime film with Peter Lorre at his best
Film Notes

The Emperor Jones (Dudley Murphy, 1933)
Paul Robeson stars in this Eugene O'Neill adaptation
Film Notes

The Mark of Zorro (Fred Niblo, 1920)
Douglas Fairbanks leads a swashbuckling silent classic
Film Notes

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring (Kim Ki-duk, 2003)
A chamber drama set in a floating Buddhist monastery
Film Notes

The City of Lost Children (Marc Caro & Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1995)
The fable of a mad scientist stealing children's dreams
Film Notes

We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay, 2011)
A mother reels from a son's unfathomable actions
Film Notes

What is Treasures from the Yale Film Archive?
Treasures from the Yale Film Archive is an ongoing series of classic and contemporary films in 35mm curated by the Yale Film Study Center and screened at the Whitney Humanities Center.

Post on May 8, 2020 - 7:15am |

May 5, 2020

Yale Library in the Media, April 2020

OHAM Director Libby Van Cleve with student workers in her office

During the month of April, library staff and projects were featured in multiple news outlets from the New York Times to Yale News. The coverage included:

· The library’s Geographic Information Systems team is helping to track the spread of COVID-19 with sophisticated mapping techniques. The team, based at Marx Science and Social Science Library and led by GIS Librarian Miriam Olivares, has been collaborating with Yale Medical School on comprehensive coronavirus dashboard. (April 30, 2020)

· University Archivist Mike Lotstein is spearheading an effort gather and preserve a record of the Yale community’s experience during the coronavirus. Read a Yale News story about the COVID-19 archiving project. (April 24, 2020)

· The Yale Daily News interviewed Susan Gibbons, Stephen F. Gates ’68 University Librarian and vice provost for Collections and Scholarly Communications;  Ève Bourbou-Allard, processing archivist at Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library; and Mike Morand, Beinecke Library’s director of communications for an in-depth story on the university library’s response to the pandemic. (April 24, 2020)

· “3,000 Interviews. 50 Years. Listen to the History of American Music.” A New York Times feature on the library’s Oral History of American Music collection also mentions OHAM’s newest venture, Alone Together, a series of short interviews with musicians about their experiences during the pandemic. (April 23, 2020)

· In honor of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, Daphne Gemmill ’72 MPH donated to the library’s Manuscripts and Archives department photos she took at New Haven’s first Earth Day in 1970. Yale News wrote about the Earth Day collection. (April 21, 2020)

· Brian Meacham, archive and special collections manager at the library’s Film Study Center, recommended some “less obvious” films in New Haven’s Daily Nutmeg  for “when watching a movie at home is pretty much doctor’s orders.” (April 20, 2020)

· Preservation Services Librarian Tara Kennedy was quoted in a Library Journal article about libraries and museums donating Personal Protective Equipment to health care providers. (April 3, 2020)

· “Those Mac disks in the basement. The ones with your kids’ pictures on them. Can you still open them?” Yale’s Alumni Magazine takes an in-depth look at the possibility of a “digital Dark Age” and the work being done by the library’s Preservation and Conservation department to make sure that we don’t lose our born-digital history. (May/June 2020)

· In eighteenth-century New Haven, the fear of “pestilence distempers” forced Yale presidents to “break up” the college at critical times. Chief Research Archivist Judith Schiff wrote a Remembrance of Plagues Past for the Yale Alumni Magazine. (May/June 2020)

Photo: OHAM Director Libby Van Cleve with student assistants, by Michael Marsland

Post on May 5, 2020 - 12:37pm |