January 12, 2014 – January 30, 2014
The UCLA Film & Television Archive is, after the Library of Congress, the largest collection of media materials in the United States and among the premier film preservation institutions in the world. The Archive’s annual preservation efforts—an ambitious, eclectic range of everything from lost silents to at-risk mid-century features, shorts, and documentaries—find new audiences in each year’s Festival of Preservation in Los Angeles and in the works selected for a smaller touring program. We are pleased to present the 18th Festival Tour, a surprise-filled treasure trove sure to delight cinema lovers of many persuasions. “Forget Blu-ray discs and plasma TVs. For true cinephiles, nothing lets a movie really sing like a pristine celluloid print. In which case, UCLA’s Festival of Preservation is a veritable opera.” —Matt Sussman, Flavorpill.
Special thanks to Shannon Kelley, Head of Public Programs; Steven Hill, Circulation; Todd Weiner, Archivist; and Dr. Jan-Christopher Horak, Director, UCLA Film & Television Archive, for making these new preservation prints available. Program notes are adapted from the 2013 Festival of Preservation program catalogue, which includes additional information about the films and the Archive’s ambitious preservation efforts. See listings for complete restoration credits.
Busy Bodies
Directed by Lloyd French
In this masterpiece of physical comedy by Laurel and Hardy, Stan and Ollie report for work at the sawmill, haplessly …
Double Door
Directed by Charles Vidor
New Yorkers who flocked in the fall of 1933 to see Elizabeth McFadden’s play Double Door knew it was inspired by Manhattan’s …
Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer
Directed by Thom Andersen, Fay Andersen, Morgan Fisher
Thom Andersen’s first feature announced the arrival of one of America’s most significant documentary auteurs. EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE, ZOOPRAXOGRAPHER is at …
Gun Crazy
Directed by Joseph H. Lewis
Bart Tare loves guns. After an ill-advised attempt to steal one at age fourteen lands him in reform school and …
International House
Directed by Edward Sutherland
The manic, boisterous energy that marks many Hollywood comedies of the early sound era owes to the vaudeville stars who …
Mantrap
Directed by Victor Fleming
Paramount Pictures paid $50,000 for Sinclair Lewis’s justifiably forgotten novel MANTRAP, but happily, screenwriters Ethel Doherty and Adelaide Heilbron turned …
Midnight Madness
Directed by F. Harmon Weight
“Its very title reeks of strange people, mystery, suspense!” read the publicity for this silent melodrama, loosely inspired by “The …
Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel with the World
Directed by Shirley Clarke
President Kennedy’s speech on the occasion of Robert Frost receiving the Congressional Gold Medal in March 1962 forms the epigraph …
Supernatural
Directed by Victor Halperin
On the strength of their independent horror film WHITE ZOMBIE, a freak success in 1932, Victor and Edward Halperin landed …
That Cold Day in the Park
Directed by Robert Altman
THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK displayed Altman’s iconoclastic fascinations: a sensitivity to schisms within normalcy, a fascination with female …
The Chase
Directed by Arthur D. Ripley
Chuck Scott (Robert Cummings) is a down-on-his-luck ex-serviceman in need of a meal in post-war Miami. Stumbling upon a lost …
Thirty Day Princess
Directed by Marion Gering
With an ebullient yet simple script penned by four different writers, including a pre-heyday Preston Sturges, THIRTY DAY PRINCESS stars …