"...Today's audiences can experience the most unusual, the most entertaining and exciting treasures from the entire range of cinema's past, all brought back to life by the Archive's team of crack preservationists." -- Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
"There's so much to discover here." -- Leonard Maltin
Download the 2013 UCLA Festival of Preservation Catalog PDF
From the Director
After last year’s herculean effort to put together the massive L.A. Rebellion program, now touring North America, the Archive has not rested on its laurels, but has put together a new UCLA Festival of Preservation for 2013. It is my great pleasure, as director of UCLA Film & Television Archive, to introduce the 2013 “FOP,” which again reflects the broad and deep efforts of UCLA Film & Television Archive to preserve and restore our national moving image heritage. Even in an era of tightening budgets and ever decreasing University-State funding, the Archive is committed to protecting and celebrating our film and television assets.
Our Festival opens with the restoration of Gun Crazy (1950), directed by Joseph H. Lewis, and one of the most celebrated film noirs made on Hollywood’s poverty row. Produced in part locally in Montrose, California, and starring Peggy Cummins, this reworking of the “Bonnie and Clyde” story served as a template for Arthur Penn’s more famous film. The Festival also features a number of other films noirs, including The Chase (1946), completed by our late preservationist, Nancy Mysel, and based on Cornell Woolrich’s classic serie noire novel, The Black Path of Fear. That film will double feature with High Tide (1947), another low-budget noir gem. And then there is Cy Endfield’s The Sound of Fury (1950), based on the same source as Fritz Lang’s classic, Fury (1936), which chronicles a brutal lynching and the media frenzy surrounding it.
Independent cinema also continues to be a major focus of the Archive’s preservation efforts. After premieringour restoration of Robert Altman’s Come Back to the Five & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982) in 2011, preservationist Jere Guldin this year introduces Altman’s first major feature, That Cold Day in the Park (1969), again funded by our good friends at The Film Foundation and the Hollywood Press Association. Preservationist Ross Lipman contributes restorations of further independent films, such as Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (1985), directed by Thom Andersen, Fay Andersen and Morgan Fisher, and Shirley Clarke's Ornette: Made in America (1985). And the independents continue with a special program of films from the L.A. Rebellion, which were discovered or preserved after last year’s monumental program. We are also proud to present a compliment of silent features, including Clara Bow’s Mantrap (1926), and the German feature, Different from the Others (1919), preserved in conjunction with the Outfest / UCLA Legacy Project.
Finally, this Festival of Preservation marks the arrival of our new Head of Preservation, Scott MacQueen, who has contributed several Hollywood features from Paramount in the 1930s, including Double Door (1934), International House (1933), and Supernatural (1933).
Our newsreel preservationists, Blaine Bartell and Jeffrey Bickel, present their restoration of a German war documentary that had been considered lost for decades, With the Greeks in the Firing Line (1913), which documents the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, as well as a second program of selected newsreels from the Hearst Metrotone News Film Collections.
We are also very happy to continue preserving and screening classic television shows. Dan Einstein presents “October Story” from the 1950s omnibus series Goodyear Television Playhouse, starring Julie Harris. Two other classic television shows, CBS Playhouse’s “The Final War of Olly Winter”(1967) and ABC Stage 67’s “Noon Wine”(1966), round out the program.
As is always the case, the Archive’s internationally recognized preservationists will appear in person at many Festival screenings to introduce the films and discuss their work with audiences. All of our preservation work and public programs—including this Festival—are funded by donations from individuals, foundations, corporations, and government agencies. We are most thankful for the generosity of these organizations and individuals.
Dr. Jan-Christopher Horak
Director, UCLA Film and Television Archive