Crowdsourcing Film Scholarship: A Wiki For Lost Old Silent Movies

The collaborative website Lost-films.eu has a database of more than 4,000 missing movies, “from an actual jazz-era version of The Great Gatsby (1926) to a re-enactment of The Battle of Gettysburg (1913) staged while the veterans were still alive. But even more curious is the site’s ‘Identify’ section – an open call to other museums and the public to I.D. films that sometimes survive without title cards, without canister labels, without so much as a cast or director or country of origin.”

Bringing The Ancient Greeks To Deepest America

In a project called “Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives: Poetry-Drama-Dialogue,” Peter Meineck and his Aquila Theatre “will stage free dramatic readings from 10 [verse epics and] plays – including Homer’s Odyssey, Sophocles’ Ajax, and Euripides’ Trojan Women – for the public, especially combat veterans, inner-city residents and rural communities … at 100 public libraries and art centers in some 20 states.”

Claim: Pot Smoke Seeping Into Vancouver Art Gallery Vault

“The VAG is a notorious gathering point for pro-marijuana events … and it’s not unusual to see – and smell – people smoking pot on the steps outside the gallery. While [a gallery volunteer] said ‘it just seems like common sense’ that marijuana smoke would have an impact on the art collection in storage, the gallery’s director Kathleen Bartels [said] the works are protected.”

When Organists Get Together

At the American Guild of Organists’ Washington convention, “they can peruse the latest offerings from music publishers” and “examine brochures from organ builders from Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia, Canada and the United States.” They can play local organs, too — though the Kennedy Center organ’s problems are “evidently so pronounced that the city’s organists have simply given up on it.”