Gilbert Cates, director of such much-admired films as "I Never Sang for My Father" and "Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams" as well as hours of television, including "Call Me Anna," the story of Patty Duke's difficult life, is these days up to his story board as producer of the Academy Award telecast.

It is Cates' second year as producer and he undertook it again only after prayerful consideration. Criticizing the show is a national pastime and the producer traditionally is a prime target. But last year's show, with its live remote telecasts from five countries, was generally thought to be one of the best in recent years.

"It's shocking how the world has turned. Last year when we did the foreign remotes, the Berlin Wall was down. We were pals with the Russians and there were all the changes in Eastern Europe. And this year. . . ." Cates trails off.

The show's theme this year is a celebration of the movies' first century. There are several landmark years from which to date that first century. The academy has chosen 1891 because it was then that Thomas Alva Edison wrote to George Eastman at Kodak in Rochester, asking him, if he could, to make film in long continuous strips. Eastman could and the movies became possible. There will be one satellite remote this year, from Paris in connection with the film centenary.

Hardly catching his breath after the Oscarcast, Cates on April 8 will move into another large challenge, as dean of UCLA's newly combined School of Theater, Film and Television. The old bifurcation of the former from the two latter no longer makes any sense, Cates agrees strongly. Cates himself has done a good deal of work on Broadway, and he first did "I Never Sang for My Father" on stage, as well as "You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running" (though he did not do the film).

"There's been an artificial distinction, and it's quite sad," Cates said at lunch a few days ago. "We're getting more and more into a multimedia age. Almost no property exists for one medium only. 'Driving Miss Daisy' was a play that became a film, 'Phantom of the Opera' is a stage musical that'll become a film."

At the Directors Guild, of which Cates has been president, there are workshop classes for members. The most requested classes, according to Cates, are sessions on working with actors. It is an activity (and an obvious link between theater and film and television) that Cates is likely to want to emphasize at UCLA.