From the dustbins of time comes this review of the truly marginalized cinema; the mysteries of the archive unleashed. Unessential Cinema is an (ir)regular series at New York City’s Anthology Film Archives that focuses on the thousands of prints, negatives, and elements that have been collected over the years from defunct laboratories, dumpsters, widowers and complete strangers. For this special screening Anthology’s Archivist, Andrew Lampert, will present a selection of orphan reels that by their very nature demonstrate what archives cannot, will not, and prefer not to save. Expect to see double projections, unfinished opuses, optical soundtracks, inexplicable footage, prints dumped by distributors, camera tests and otherwise elusive whodunits. Titles might include: Student Film Trilogy, In The Pants Of The Universe, The Second Cameraman Theory, Bilateral Approximation, Please Stand By and more. (Andrew Lampert)
NOTE: Andrew Lampert will also be appearing at Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley on Tuesday, April 3 at 7:30 pm with a program of films recently preserved by Anthology Film Archives.