In this round-up of stories you may have missed: there’s no place like home for a priceless piece of movie memorabilia stuck in legal limbo; an Ivy League student using stop-animation to tell the story of what happened after hours in the library one night; UCLA’s Pioneers of Queer Cinema series is going on tour; what insiders think about African cinema at Cannes and other festivals; a new documentary about an organization that changed Toronto queer history; very rare movies to be featured in a Library of Congress inaugural festival this June; how curator amassed a huge pan-African film archive, and some exciting hip-hop news!
Sterling Library inspires student’s animated film—a love story
Colorful Library, a five-minute film by Filip Birkne, uses stop-motion animation to tells the story of what happens in Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library after hours one night.
Source: Yale Library
https://library.yale.edu/news/sterling-library-inspires-students-animated-film-love-story
‘A cinema of resistance’: how June Givanni amassed a 10,000-piece pan-African film archive
How curator June Givanni amassed a 10,000-piece pan-African film archive.
Source: The Guardian
Library of Congress Festival of Film And Sound Announces Full Lineup of Rare Cinema and Special Guests
The inaugural Library of Congress Festival of Film and Sound announces its roster of rare cinema, with films like James Cagney’s Ceiling Zero (1936) and special guests.
Source: Broadway World
FBI charges man with stealing Dorothy’s The Wizard of Oz slippers
A man has been charged with the theft of a pair of the red slippers worn by Judy Garland’s character Dorothy in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. One of four pairs in existence, they were stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota in 2005 and recovered by the FBI in 2018. The stolen slippers, with an estimated worth of $3.5 million, cannot be returned to the museum until all legal proceedings have been concluded.
Source: BBC
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65629161
Pioneers of Queer Cinema Tour
UCLA’s Pioneers of Queer Cinema series is going on tour. The organizers and supporters of this series hope to introduce and reacquaint audiences with landmark queer works and their makers, while inspiring new conversations and renewed action surrounding the complex obstacles LGBTQ+ communities continue to face.
Source: UCLA Cinema
https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/events/2022/pioneers-of-queer-cinema-tour
Africa (Finally) Has Its Cannes Moment
African cinema was well represented at Cannes this year, but insiders say top festivals need to do more to reflect the continent’s true filmmaking diversity.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/africa-cannes-film-festival-2023-1235483534/
This organization changed Toronto queer history — and a new film shows us how we can learn from them
A new documentary, Supporting Our Selves, directed by Lulu Wei, links the history of Toronto’s pivotal Community One Foundation to modern queer advocacy.
Source: CBC
https://www.cbc.ca/arts/jenn-mason-supporting-our-selves-inside-out-2023-1.6859287
And finally, Regan Sommer McCoy, the Chief Curator of The Mixtape Museum and the ‘23 Visiting Hip Hop Scholar at Virginia Union University, has been voted onto the board of ARSC, The Association for Recorded Sound Collections and will join the School of Visual Arts as a Hip Hop Curator.