Camen Design Forum

Can you help me find The Cure for Insomnia?

append delete Martijn

Hi all, long time no seen. I’ve just returned from my holidays and am prepping for university. But between all this business I enjoy surfing the web, reading this board and chatting with friends. Out of the first and the latter grew a funny dare. I dared a friend to watch the complete The Cure for Insomnia if I were to get my hands on it, by any means necessary.

For those of you who do not know: The Cure for Insomnia with its running time of 5220 minutes was once the longest film on our world. It has a very sparse page on Wikipedia: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/The_cure_for_insomnia. Out of the five longest films (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_longest_films_by_running_time) I find on this one and Cinématon to sound interesting and worth wasting time on.

Now the big question is, how do you get your hands on this piece of art? I checked the main stream markets (eBay, Amazon, Play.com) and the underground channels (The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, BTDigg) to no avail. Wikipedia doesn’t supply much to go by other than the artist John Henry Timmis IV… who was always obscure in life (http://www.metafilter.com/80070/Waiting-for-the-CTA) and is now, sadly, deceased.

IMDB (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0284020/) offers little more, only mentioning The School of the Art Institute of Chicago as publishing company for the film. I will draft an email to them tomorrow but have little faith in it. What department would that email have to go to? I don’t know, in which case they tell you to just send it off to the “Webmaster”. Last time I tried to contact a big institution through their webmaster I never got referred to the right people.

Any ideas?

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append delete #26. TG94

Martijn
Hi again, i have confirmed that the lawyer is most likely the woman we think, she is from the same hometown and studied in a uni in Chicago. i have emailed every staff member of Anthologyfilmarchives and will next get in contact with the school where this movie was first shown in full length in one sitting. the School of the art institute in Chicago from jan 31 to feb 3 1987. i will try to update you on my findings and answers

append delete #27. Martijn

“I have emailed every staff member of [Anthology Film Archives] …”

That might have been a big much ;-)

“… and will next get in contact with the school [SAIC] where this movie was first shown in full length in one sitting.”

I emailed the Animation Office at SAIC (which was the closest thing I could find to a film department) almost a whole year ago [1] and have never received any sort of reply. If you do get answers that would be great. And it would annoy me personally.

Once I am back home (somewhere next week) and have a page online for keeping track of the film I will put a link in here.

“I will check on this site everyday I can.”

If you want to make sure you don’t miss any updates you can subscribe to this thread through RSS: http://forum.camendesign.com/can_you_help_me_find_the_cure_for_insomnia_.rss (in case you had not figured this out yet).

If you do get into finding a location for the film you will have to think about things as transport, recoding, and most importantly: rights. I would guess librarians would be best for the first things, possibly the internet archive. Rights are more tricky. As a film, under modern American copyright law, it will probably be protected still and not even be eligible for showing ’til 02081-12-09 — 70 years after the death of Mr Groban.

You can see I put questions about this in my original email to SAIC and their video data bank [1].

We should get things like this as clear as possible for future detective work, which is another reason why I wanted to set-up a dedicated page for it.

[1]: (’011-08-20) http://forum.camendesign.com/can_you_help_me_find_the_cure_for_insomnia_+1#6tg0sds2c6ko

append delete #28. TG94

Martijn

Hi also tried to twitter robert egert numerous times, never heard back , and since the staff list of AFA is only like 10 people i think they won't mind. Yet to contact the SAIC, but i think since we are looking for a 34 year old movie, we might not want to just look in one department, this is a movie that noone has seen in year (most likely) sinces 1978. Anyone, anywhere inside that school might have clues to the whereabouts of the movie, it's not like it is a easy thing to lose :/

append delete #29. Martijn

“we might not want to just look in one department, this is a movie that noone has seen in year (most likely) sinces 1978.”

That’s exactly what the SAIC’s Video Data Bank [1] is for:

“The Video Data Bank is an essential destination for video art, media art, video art history, art resources, artist interviews, curated programs, and much more…”

But they couldn’t help me. A 34 year old video shouldn’t mean anything to them, one of the currently most viewed videos is from 1970 [2] — over 40 years old!

“Anyone, anywhere inside that school might have clues to the whereabouts of the movie, it's not like it is a easy thing to lose :/”

You would be surprised :) Never heard about the Houdini voice recordings? They were completely lost until someone found them in an attic after the owner had died in 1970, 56 years after the recording was made [3]. It is still the only known recording of his voice. (Listen @ Internet Archive: [4].)

Nobody had any clues about the whereabouts. To be honest, most people never knew of its existence. The only reason we have it is because somebody stumbled upon it. This could easily happen with this film too, no matter how much you ask around.

Keep us posted if you get any answers and thanks for your input! :D

[1]: http://www.vdb.org/
[2]: http://www.vdb.org/collection/gallery/all/3952
[3]: http://www.wildabouthoudini.com/2010/11/houdini-speaks-in-1970.html
[4]: http://archive.org/details/EdisonMachineRehearsalByHarryHoudini1914

append delete #30. NickPfen

I really didn't read this thread, but the thread title caught my eye. When I was a sophomore in college, I had a bad case of insomnia. I spent hours in my bed staring at the ceiling and watching Lord of the Rings from 11pm to 7am. My sleep time was between class from 11am to 1pm. I was on two hour sleep schedule and playing NCAA baseball. This lasted for 90 days.

I felt like Howard Hughes in the movie _Aviator_ during the scene he was locked in his theater and reciting, "come in with the milk, come in with the milk, come in with the milk." Too funny now, but miserable back then. LOL.

Anyway, the cure was to shut down all distractions - school work, TV, alcohol and computer. The only thing I did was take long nature walks, drink water, eat fruit and veggies, and play baseball. Ironically, during this insomnia period, I had the best year in my baseball career - go figure :p After 30 days of this, I slept for two days straight. It was amazing.

By 2014, I bet a growing number of teenagers will have sleep dysfunction because of the growing number of screen distractions. God save us ;)

append delete #31. Insomnia Healer

Have you tried endless sex?

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