University Of California At Los Angeles Film And Television Archives

When talk turns to the golden age of Hollywood, by common consent 1939 is the year of years. In that 12-month period the studios released an unprecedented group of exceptional films, including "Gone With the Wind," "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," "Stagecoach," "Gunga Din," "Ninotchka," "The Women" and "The Wizard of Oz." It was no wonder that Robert Dooley, author of the authoritative "From Scarface to Scarlett: American Films in the 1930s," was moved to write that Hollywood in that year "reached a fabulous zenith it was never again to attain."

When talk turns to the golden age of Hollywood, by common consent 1939 is the year of years. In that 12-month period the studios released an unprecedented group of exceptional films, including "Gone With the Wind," "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," "Stagecoach," "Gunga Din," "Ninotchka," "The Women" and "The Wizard of Oz." It was no wonder that Robert Dooley, author of the authoritative "From Scarface to Scarlett: American Films in the 1930s," was moved to write that Hollywood in that year "reached a fabulous zenith it was never again to attain."

Outfest and the UCLA Film and Television Archive are undertaking a major preservation initiative for gay and lesbian movies, festival Executive Director Stephen Gutwillig announced Thursday night at the event's curtain-raiser at the Orpheum Theatre. The opening of the film festival also was noteworthy for its first-ever introduction by a mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa.

Not every movie produced by the Hollywood studios during the Golden Age was tied up in neat little bows; it wasn't all boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. "Films were more edgy and involved characters that were less than perfect," says UCLA film professor Jonathan Kuntz. "Certainly in the 1930s with the Great Depression, there was a lot of disillusionment with the establishment and society. World War II shook everything up and all kinds of crazy things happen."

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 and Television Archives has received a $110,000 grant from the American Film Institute and National Endowment for the Arts Film Preservation Program in support of its nitrate film preservation program. The UCLA archives are one of 12 organizations receiving AFI/NEA grants totaling $355,600 to preserve, safeguard and restore films that might otherwise have been lost due to the deterioration of the nitrate base used in films until the early 1950s.

Despite all the sunshine, or maybe because of it, Los Angeles tends to be a hidden city, a place whose great treasures are not always the obvious ones. So it is that the city's most surprising, most stimulating, most invigorating film event is not the Oscars, not even one of L.A.'s sprightly film festivals, but the UCLA Film and Television Archive's splendid and irreplaceable Festival of Preservation.

In Hollywood, even studios become stars. The Disney Studio daily celebrates itself in Anaheim, Orlando, Japan and France and shopping malls everywhere. Universal discovered a form of stardom in its own back lot (and in Florida, too) with tours, stunts and rides. And the recent Ted Turner-produced book and television documentary about MGM, "The Lion That Roared," were commercial celebrations of an old studio's glory.

Walt Whitman wasn't referring to the UCLA Film and Television Archive's biennial "Festival of Preservation" when he wrote, "I am large, I contain multitudes," but he might as well have been. Beginning Thursday and lasting for a month, the festival is notable not only for its 24 separate programs but for the staggering diversity of its choices, films that run the widest possible emotional, aesthetic and temporal gamut. The breadth of the films preserved and restored by UCLA is remarkable.

Jo Franklin, producer of the PBS documentaries "Saudi Arabia" (1981), "The Oil Kingdoms" (1983) and "Islam: A Civilization and Its Art" (1994), has given those programs and 111 hours of unaired footage about the Middle East to the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

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.

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.

Jo Franklin, producer of the PBS documentaries "Saudi Arabia" (1981), "The Oil Kingdoms" (1983) and "Islam: A Civilization and Its Art" (1994), has given those programs and 111 hours of unaired footage about the Middle East to the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Outfest and the UCLA Film and Television Archive are undertaking a major preservation initiative for gay and lesbian movies, festival Executive Director Stephen Gutwillig announced Thursday night at the event's curtain-raiser at the Orpheum Theatre. The opening of the film festival also was noteworthy for its first-ever introduction by a mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa.

Walt Whitman wasn't referring to the UCLA Film and Television Archive's biennial "Festival of Preservation" when he wrote, "I am large, I contain multitudes," but he might as well have been. Beginning Thursday and lasting for a month, the festival is notable not only for its 24 separate programs but for the staggering diversity of its choices, films that run the widest possible emotional, aesthetic and temporal gamut. The breadth of the films preserved and restored by UCLA is remarkable.

That the UCLA Film and Television Archive is presenting its two-week tribute to director Martin Scorsese during the height of the movie awards season is strictly coincidental, head of programming Cheng-Sim Lim insists. "We have always wanted to do something on Scorsese," Lim says. "It was just the matter of finding the right time and to also have him available. It just so happened he's available now.

A first-ever archive to collect and preserve independent films will be created at UCLA under a partnership announced Monday by the university and the Sundance Institute. Funded initially by the Ahmanson Foundation, the collection--part of the UCLA Film and Television Archive--will include a wide range of works by non-mainstream filmmakers, as well as documentaries and selected newsreel material from UCLA's Hearst Metrotone News Collection.

Not every movie produced by the Hollywood studios during the Golden Age was tied up in neat little bows; it wasn't all boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. "Films were more edgy and involved characters that were less than perfect," says UCLA film professor Jonathan Kuntz. "Certainly in the 1930s with the Great Depression, there was a lot of disillusionment with the establishment and society. World War II shook everything up and all kinds of crazy things happen."

Despite all the sunshine, or maybe because of it, Los Angeles tends to be a hidden city, a place whose great treasures are not always the obvious ones. So it is that the city's most surprising, most stimulating, most invigorating film event is not the Oscars, not even one of L.A.'s sprightly film festivals, but the UCLA Film and Television Archive's splendid and irreplaceable Festival of Preservation.

Just in time to record slices of life in Hong Kong as it was shifting from British colony to Chinese "special administrative region," dynamic filmmaker Fruit Chan began a trilogy of films set in this transitional period. In the process he revitalized Hong Kong's independent film movement. Chan, whose real name is Chan Kuo, emerges as a major talent in world cinema.