Television Archive

Perhaps no country in the world has garnered more attention this year than Iran, from the street protests over the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to revelations about its nuclear program. Yet somehow in the midst of turmoil and upheaval, the country's cinema is thriving. Several of its leading filmmakers, screenwriters and actors are in Los Angeles for the kickoff of a 10-day film program at UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

For four decades, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has fed film aficionados a steady diet of movie classics -- retrospectives that included works from Roman Polanski, Cary Grant, Ernst Lubitsch and, in a current series, James Mason. But the museum's weekend film program was losing both money and its audience, and LACMA said Tuesday that it was pulling the plug on its cinematic centerpiece.

Hal Ashby is the cinematic equivalent of a supernova. The director's work burned startlingly bright for a brief period in the 1970s -- before his demons, including drug abuse, got the better of him, extinguishing his star shortly before his death in 1988.

After a triumphant world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, the North American debut of the newly restored version of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's beloved "The Red Shoes" will take place at UCLA's Billy Wilder Theater in the Hammer Museum in Westwood. Which is only fitting, because it was the UCLA Film & Television Archive that did the restoration.

It's so big it takes 24 evenings of programming spread over two months to contain all of its treasures. It's so important it's going to travel all across North America, visiting cities from Vancouver, Canada, to New York. And it's such a deep-dish delight for hard-core film fans it could only have come from Los Angeles. Ladies and gentlemen, the UCLA Film & Television Archive Festival of Preservation has returned.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science's Academy Foundation's Institutional Grants Program announced Tuesday that it has awarded $500,000 to 58 film-related nonprofit organizations in the U.S. and Canada. Among the local organizations receiving money for programs are the California Institute of Arts, Loyola Marymount University, USC's Master of Professional Writing Program and School of Cinematic Art, UCLA's Film and Television Program and Workplace Hollywood. Local institutional grants were awarded for the job training program at Hollywood Cinema Production Resources, the screening series at UCLA Film and Television archive, the Access LA Seminar Series and Screenwriting Lab at Outfest.

The UCLA Film & Television Archive is no small place. The Library of Congress aside, it's the biggest collection in the country, with film holdings alone numbering a staggering 85,000 titles. Wouldn't you like to take a peek at the rarities hidden in the dark corners of the archive's massive vaults? Now you can.

It's the dialogue, stupid. Sure, the directors and actors in the classic screwball comedies were terrific, but without some fantastic scripts all that talent would have gone to waste. UCLA Film and Television Archive's latest program, which opens Friday, gives these legendary scribes the respect they deserve.

THE UCLA Film & Television Archive's new venue, the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum, officially opens Friday with a screening of the Oscar-winning 1960 Wilder classic "The Apartment." Two days later, the archive kicks off its "Art of Light" series, which celebrates cinematography. The opening program spotlights Hungarian-born cinematographers Laszlo Kovacs ("Easy Rider") and Vilmos Zsigmond.