Screeings in Savannah
This year, the Conference will offer evening screenings at the hotel on Friday and Saturday night. In addition, AMIA will offer a Community Screening on Saturday afternoon for the families in Savannah.
FRIDAY . October 10
7:15pm – 8:00pm
It Happened in 16mm: A Night of Regional Film
The Small Gauge Amateur Film Committee and the Regional Audiovisual Archives Committee are co-sponsoring a small gauge screening event that will feature 16mm film from regional archives across the country. The program will be curated from the collections of AMIA members, with a focus on RAVA’s committee members.
8:05pm – 8:50pm
Girls on Film: Juliette Gordon Low and the Girl Scouts
Savannah is the birthplace of both Girl Scouts and the organization’s founder Juliette Gordon Low. Join us for the panel discussion and screening, “Girls on Film: Juliette Gordon Low and the Girl Scouts,” during which we offer an inside glimpse at sponsored films for and media works made by Girl Scouts. Also present will be Katharine Keena, a representative of the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace.
8:55pm – 9:40pm
Unsilent Savannah
This screening event combines rarely seen silent archival films culled from the collections of
Savannah area archives, cultural institutions and private collections with live performances of new scores composed by local electronic and experimental musicians. The program will feature the Center for Low County Studies’ films of archaeological sites throughout coastal Georgia, Georgia Historical Society’s Home Movies of Johnny Harris (1940-1941), highlighting scenes of the popular Savannah barbeque restaurateur’s domestic life with his wife, their monkey, dog, and chickens as well as a variety of eclectic home movies and amateur films from private collections documenting life in Savannah. Musicians performing new scores at the screening include Jeff Zagers, who has toured extensively and has an impressive discography of releases on various record labels, and other active participants in the local avant garde music community, including Michael Christopher Walker, Gus Miller, and Ross Fish.
SATURDAY . October 11th
7:00pm – 9:30pm
Global Exchange Screenings: An American in Madras and Pan Si Dong
Screenings will feature the two films discussed during the session, “International Film Production, Preservation, and Discovery: Two Stories,” part of this year’s Global Exchange Stream. There will be a brief Q&A following the screening of each film.
An American in Madras (dir. Karan Bali, 2013, 79 min) primarily traces American-born filmmaker Ellis R. Dungan’s years in India. Dungan made India his home from 1935-50 and became a celebrated director in the Tamil Film Industry based in South India. Born in 1909 and hailing from Barton, Ohio, Dungan reached India on February 25th, 1935 intending to stay for 6 months, but ended up staying for 15 years and making 13 feature films, 11 in Tamil and one each in Telugu and Hindi. During this period, he brought many technical innovations to the developing Tamil Film Industry of the 1930s and ‘40s, and infused a sense of professionalism into its filmmaking. All this, without understanding a word of the language! The film traces Dungan’s Indian connection right up to 1994, when on a trip to India, the Tamil Film Industry felicitated him in Madras for his contribution to its development, 43 years after he had left India.
In Pan Si Dong (aka The Cave of the Silken Web, dir. Dan Duyu, 1927, 60 min.) the pilgrim Tang Hiuen Tsiangs, sent out to search for the holy books, is caught and kept prisoner by seven beautiful women who turn out to be spirits of the Spider Cave. They try to force him to marry their leader, meanwhile his followers struggle to rescue him. Finally, after many failures, they succeed using advice from the White Goddess, and they set off from the cave. Pan Si Dong is full off magic and spirits with extraordinary powers. The moral is obvious: live wisely, don’t follow your desires, and if you conduct an ungodly life it will destroy you. Pan Si Dong was regarded as lost until 2011 when a copy was found in the vaults of the Norwegian National Library. The news about the find made headlines all over China. With its many beloved characters and popular actors Pan Si Dong set a new box office record in China in 1927. It is regarded as one of the most important films in the history of Chinese cinema.
AMIA COMMUNITY SCREENING
Saturday . 3:00pm . The Lucas Theatre
PETER PAN
Working with the local visitors bureau, AMIA has invited the community of Savannah and local military bases, to a screening of Walt Disney’s Peter Pan. Preceded by a short discussion about the importance of preservation, It is an opportunity to highlight the restoration of a classic motion picture and encourage families to see it on the big screen.