While the newest movies and the latest TV shows can be seen on
countless screens across the world, UCLA prides itself on treasures
saved from a bygone era.
Beginning July 20 and running through Aug. 19, the 13th Annual
Festival of Preservation showcases the most recent work of the UCLA
Film and Television Archive’s world-renowned
preservationists.
Nightly events feature a multitude of preserved and restored
works, from classic television shows and revolutionary films to
rarely screened avant-garde films and historic news reels.
“It’s a truly eclectic range of works,”
archive film preservationist Ross Lipman said.
The Festival of Preservation began in 1988 as an annual event
and continued through 1996, when it was reconfigured and changed to
biannual. The Archive’s preservationists find material from
over a century’s worth of film, television and news clips
kept in the UCLA Film and Television Archive, the second biggest
media library in the nation, only smaller than the Library of
Congress.
According to Lipman, who will be part of the panels for the
Kenneth Anger collection and “Faces,” restoring damaged
or aged prints of films can take between six months and two years,
as the process involves both print and sound restoration as well as
checking for historical accuracy.
“There is no clear answer” to how long restoration
takes, he said. “It usually takes me a couple of years, but I
have multiple projects in different stages going on at the same
time.”
While the UCLA Film and Television Archive holds 27 million feet
of pre-1950 nitrate-style film and 17 million feet of acetate-based
film, newsreel restoration is extremely difficult because there is
only one copy of most of the newsreels.
“Whatever you’ve got, that’s it,” said
Bryce Lowe, a newsreel preservationist.
As the festival traditionally includes the most recently
finished restorations, the program depends on the
preservationists’ decisions as to what they feel should or
needs to be saved, according to Andrew Aalsberg, co-head of
programming for the Archive.
Lipman, for example, leans toward avant-garde work such as
Kenneth Anger’s films, while long-time and semi-retired
archivist Robert Gitt prefers the old-age Hollywood classics. Gitt
will also be honored for his work at the Archive during the
festival.
“He really put UCLA on the map,” Lipman said.
Many restoration projects are also chosen based on timeliness,
such as the 50th anniversary today of the original release of the
William Randolph Hearst newsreels.
“A lot of these haven’t been seen in their entirety
since 1956,” Lowe said. “If it hadn’t been for
the festival, who knows what would be left. It’s really
satisfying for us to be able to save these for future
generations.”
The rarity of the festival’s works and the pristine
condition of the prints bring sold-out crowds to the James Bridges
Theater in Melnitz Hall night after night.
“They are as close to how they were originally screened
… and expressed as they were originally intended. That’s
what (audiences) want,” Aalsberg said. “To get (the
film) back to its original form.”
“We want to make them as authentic as possible,”
Lipman added.
Many newsreels, besides being only copies, are usually put into
storage after they are shown and later cut up into shorter clips
for stock footage.
“It’s rare to see what people actually saw in
theaters 50 years ago,” Lowe said.
Beyond the screenings themselves, the festival offers unique
viewing experiences, such as Orson Welles’
“MacBeth” presented without dialogue to bring focus to
the film rather than to Shakespeare’s words. A 1928 version
of “Chicago” will also be screened with a live
orchestral accompaniment.
As hard-to-find as they are today, many of these movies were
screened just as rarely during their original releases.
The Kenneth Anger collection will feature one of his biggest
works, the short “Scorpio Rising,” which was banned
during its initial run in the mid-1960s because of how the film
dealt with subcultures within the time period, as well as
“Fireworks,” another of Anger’s more familiar
films ““ notable for its controversially direct and obvious
dealings with homosexuality.
Because films deteriorate each time they are shown, the prints
for films like “Scorpio Rising” and
“Turnabout,” as well as the restored television and
newsreel programs, which the Archive’s film preservationists
work to restore to mint condition by hand, will probably never be
seen in such high quality again.
“They’re fresh from the labs,” Lipman said.
“People really appreciate the large projection and quality
cut.”
Ultimately, the Festival of Preservation celebrates the work of
the Archive and allows it to be shared with the public.
“This is really the outlet we have to show off our
work,” Aalsberg said.