M.J. Rose

This is a wonderful treasure trove and project.

“You can browse through the Library’s complete database of silent films, which details the 11,000 films made between 1912 and 1929, including the 3,300 that are known to exist”

Silent film star Dorothy Kelly pictured in the Day Book, 1916. Library of Congress

The Forgotten Stars of Silent Film

(The Atlantic)

The Library of Congress wants film buffs to shout out who—and what—they know during a series of special screenings.

“The majority of silent films are long gone.

Some 70 percent of the movies made in the United States between 1912 and 1929—nearly 8,000 titles—are lost to history, according to a study last year by the Library of Congress. Even many of the existing films from the pre-talkie era are mysteries to today’s scholars.

Once-famous starlets are no longer widely recognizable. Films that wowed audiences a century ago have been all but erased from collective memory. And so, for the third year, the Library of Congress is calling on film buffs, historians, and members of the public to help search for clues in old reels. The smallest fragment of a detail—like the furniture used in a film’s set design—may be the key to unraveling a forgotten work’s origins.

Over the course of a weekend-long series of screenings at the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia, next month, attendees will be asked to shout out potentially meaningful details in film as the watch—names of actors, locations, car models, and other clues that might help reveal a film’s origins. Film conservationists already know this approach works. After 204 such screenings so far, more than 100 films have been identified….”

For the complete piece, click here.

As our waters recede due to drought, strange and beautiful things emerge – as if from a time machine.

Colonial church emerges from receding reservoir in Mexico
SF Gate/Associated Press

“MEXICO CITY — Leonel Mendoza fishes every day in a reservoir surrounded by forest and mountains in the southern Mexico state of Chiapas. But in recent days, he also has been ferrying curious passengers out to see the remains of a colonial-era church that has emerged from the receding waters.

A drought this year has hit the watershed of the Grijalva river, dropping the water level in the Nezahualcoyotl reservoir by 82 feet.

It is the second time a drop in the reservoir has revealed the church since it was flooded when the dam was completed in 1966. In 2002, the water was so low visitors could walk inside the church.

“The people celebrated. They came to eat, to hang out, to do business. I sold them fried fish. They did processions around the church,” Mendoza said.

The church in the Quechula locality was built by a group of monks headed by Friar Bartolome de la Casas, who arrived in the region inhabited by the Zoque people in the mid-16th century…”

For the rest, and a video too, click here.

News of the very, very old. This time, it’s about incredibly ancient art.

So far the team has unearthed three engraved fragments – and they hope to find more

Ice Age engravings found at Jersey archaeological site
By Jonathan Webb (BBC News)

“A dig in Jersey has yielded a stash of hunter-gatherer artefacts from the end of the last Ice Age, including stone pieces criss-crossed by carved lines.

They are similar to engravings found from the same period in continental Europe, but are the first of their kind in the British Isles.

Archaeologists are in the early stages of analysing the finds, but estimate them to be at least 14,000 years old.

This places the camp among the earliest in northern Europe after the freeze.

It would also mean that the markings pre-date the earliest known art in the UK, which was found carved into stone walls and bones at Creswell Crags in Derbyshire in 2003.

However, the team wants to study the engravings more closely and hopefully find more of them, before making any grand claims.

Dr Chantal Conneller is co-director of the Ice Age Island project, which for five years has been working on the Les Varines site in the south east area of Jersey. She told the BBC: “We’re feeling reasonably confident at the moment that what we’ve got fits into this broader idea of non-representational Magdalenian art…”

For the rest, click here.