Robin Hood: Media Creature
Overview
Robin Hood: Media Creature will offer unprecedented views of the place of the outlaw hero in popular culture. In addition to more than fifty academic and interdisciplinary presentations, it will feature the world premiere screening of a restored print of Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood with live orchestra, a series of other screenings and concerts, and a lavish exhibition of rare and curious books and objects in Rush Rhees Library.
The University of Rochester was the setting for the First Biennial Conference sponsored by the International Association for Robin Hood Studies in 1997. This was a wildly successful multi-disciplinary and performance-oriented event, which drew significant broadcast and online attention from CNN, Fox, and all local TV outlets, and was the subject of a major feature story syndicated by AP in many newspapers across the US. Since then, conferences have occurred every two years at alternating sites in the UK and North America, including Nottingham, London (Ontario), York (UK), Newark (DE), and the National Conference Centre, Gregynog (Wales). We anticipate 100 or so non-Rochester conferees, from North America, the UK and Europe, and Japan for this event. We also anticipate that five hundred or more people from the UR and the greater Rochester communities will attend screenings, performances, recitals, and scholarly presentations. Each of the previous conferences has resulted in an influential volume of scholarly essays as well, and we have already had inquiries and conversations concerning publication of the Rochester proceedings.
The centerpiece of the Conference will be the screening of a restored version of Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood (1922), contributed by the George Eastman House and the Museum of Modern Art (cost born by those institutions: approximately $100,000). This will take place before a live audience of conferees, UR students and faculty, and Rochester community members at the Dryden Theatre, GEH (capacity: 500). Gillian Anderson, renowned conductor and musicologist (Bologna) will direct her newly reconstructed score for the film with a live orchestra, making this a unique event that showcases this masterpiece of American art and technology, and gives contemporary audiences the unique opportunity to experience the multi-sensory pleasures of early silent cinema. This will feature musicians from the River Campus and the Eastman School.
Other plenary events will be a full program of Robin Hood operettas (a medium which boasts a long and massively popular tradition), performed by the Ohio Light Opera (Steven Daigle of ESM, Artistic Director) and ESM and River Campus singers and musicians; a lute recital with Grammy Award-winner Paul O’Dette (ESM); a unique screening of the earliest surviving Robin Hood film (1912), with live piano accompaniment by Philip Carli; and plenary lectures by Gillian Anderson and Professor Helen Phillips of the University of Cardiff, Wales. Anderson has performed throughout the world as a conductor, has composed several major works, and is a distinguished musicologist and the founding editor of a new journal, Music and the Moving Image (Illinois). Helen Phillips is a distinguished professor at the University of Cardiff, author / editor of three recent books on Robin Hood and medieval / modern popular culture, and an recognized authority on medieval literature and religion. Patrick Loughney, former Head of the Motion Picture Department at GEH and now Head, National Preservation Center of the Library of Congress, will return to introduce the screening of the film and take part in a plenary panel. Stephen Knight, the foremost scholar of Robin Hood in the world, will moderate that panel, offer a new paper, and take part in several other events. Katie Trainor, head of Film Collections at MOMA, will participate, along with distinguished film historians Gaylyn Studlar and Richard Koszarski and local superstars such as Paul O’Dette and Steve Daigle. There will also be nearly fifty presentations addressing academic and artistic issues through many disciplinary perspectives. The conference will also host a major exhibition of Robin Hood-related artifacts including 40-50 never-before-exhibited production stills from the 1922 Robin Hood made available by GEH, together with several hundred rare and unusual items – from original posters, eighteenth-century libretti, the boots that Fairbanks wore in the film, and many other printed items (books, programs, ads, comics, games and artifacts from the Strong Museum, etc.) – illustrating the full range of Robin Hood’s popularity.