Restoration expert Robert Gitt was quoted using the metaphor as early as 1992, to refer to silent-era films, newsreels, and kinescopes.
[3] However, a much wider group of works fall under the orphan rubric when the term is expanded to refer to all manner of films that have been neglected.
Documentarians, filmmakers, historians, curators, collectors and scholars have joined forces with archivists because they deem orphans not only historical documents, but also evidence of alternative, suppressed, minority or forgotten histories.
EYE Film Institute Netherlands hosted Orphans 9 ("The Future of Obsolescence," 2014) in Amsterdam, attracting attendees from 30 nations.
In 2001, members of these academic-archival professions began referring to an “orphan film movement.” As archivist-scholar Caroline Frick has written, some of the most active participants identify themselves as “orphanistas,” passionate advocates for saving, studying, and screening neglected cinema.
In 2004, visual anthropologist Emily Cohen wrote that the movement's creative and intellectual ferment constituted an “Orphanista Manifesto.”[7] More pragmatically, the group's rising influence in the United States affected discourse and policies about copyright reform, joining the broader media reform movement.
Examples of this include the 2003 Supreme Court case Eldred v. Ashcroft and the 2006 Copyright Office Report on Orphan Works.
In September 2008, the U.S. Senate passed a bill (S.2913) "to provide a limitation on judicial remedies in copyright infringement cases involving orphan works," but the House of Representatives adjourned before addressing the measure.
At the Cinemateca de Cuba, for example, the term "huérfanos" has been used to conceptualize the lost and abandoned works of Cuban film history, its "orfandad."
By 2008, however, the WCF's mission statement referred only to "neglected" films rather than orphans, as the foundation helps fund preservation of lesser known theatrical motion pictures, which remain under the legal ownership of some party.
In April 2008, the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) endorsed a "Declaration on Fair Use and Access" which stated "FIAF supports efforts to clarify the legal status of 'orphan' motion pictures and related promotional and historical materials for the purpose of preservation and public access."
Currently, the European Union is addressing copyright, access, and preservation issues via FORWARD, a three-year project (2013-2016) to create a registry of orphan films.