Lost But Not Forgotten: The Thanhouser Studio
Date: September 10, 2014
Speaker: Ned Thanhouser — Thanhouser Films
Film history has forgotten the pioneering productions created by the Thanhouser studio that operated in New Rochelle, New York during the birth of cinema in America. From 1910 to 1917 the Thanhouser studio produced and released more than 1,000 films, of which some 220 have survived. Reconstructing the history of his grandfather’s studio and the stories behind key executives, actors, technicians, directors, and the films they made has been Ned Thanhouser’s focus for more than 25 years. He will share these stories, as well as the challenges posed by decades of changing video technology and the surprising results of making the films available for free online.
About the Speaker
Ned Thanhouser (@nthanhou) is the grandson of silent film pioneers Gertrude and Edwin Thanhouser and is president of Thanhouser Company Film Preservation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation. Since 1986, he has been actively involved in the research, acquisition, preservation and publication of the history, surviving films, and related ephemera from the Thanhouser studio that operated in New Rochelle, NY from 1909 to 1918. He is a member of Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) and the Society of Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) and has presented and published research papers at the SCMS conferences (2005, 2013), the AMIA Journal The Moving Image (2011), the Women and the Silent Screen conference (2006), and the Domitor conference (2012). He is also co-founder and vice-president of the International Youth Silent Film Festival which organizes competitions for filmmakers age 20 and under to create modern versions of silent films.
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