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LANDMARK LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL AND TRANSGENDER FILM COLLECTION CREATED
BY UCLA AND OUTFEST
LOS ANGELES, CA - The UCLA Film and Television Archive
and Outfest, a leading showcase for diverse, international gay, lesbian,
bisexual and transgender (LGBT) film and video, today announced the Outfest
Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation. This historic
collaboration will create the largest publicly accessible collection
of LGBT films in the world and will help to preserve both the history
and the future of LGBT film.
The project is supported in part by private University funds allocated by the
UCLA Center for Community Partnerships under its initiative, which supports
research and programs improving the quality of life in Southern California.
The David Bohnett Foundation and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association also
contributed funding to launch the project and to support initial fundraising
efforts.
The need for this initiative is profound. While mainstream films are both collected
by nonprofit archives (including the UCLA Film and Television Archive) and
cared for by the commercial film industry itself, independent films are largely
overlooked. Gay and lesbian independent films – including significant
titles from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s – are in particular peril because
of a perceived lack of commercial value by the industry and/or the filmmakers’ inability
to maintain their work themselves.
”The creation of the largest collection of media materials of this kind
is important not only for scholars, researchers, filmmakers, and historians worldwide;
but also for the broader society,” said Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., UCLA
Associate Vice Chancellor of Community Partnerships.
An Ideal Collaboration
The Legacy Project collaboration represents a homecoming of sorts for Outfest,
which was founded at UCLA in 1982 under the auspices of the UCLA Film and Television
Archive. Outfest screened its diverse offerings on campus for three years before
striking out on its own.
“Whenever Outfest programs a revival screening, we brace ourselves for
a print on its very last legs because there’s no real money to be made
from a new print, or the elements are lost, or the filmmaker has died,” said
Stephen Gutwillig, Executive Director of Outfest.
“These films represent our community’s cultural legacy and we refuse
to be complicit in the erasure of our own history. This is why the creation
of the Outfest Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation is so crucial...and
so welcome.”
Outfest will be responsible for identifying and prioritizing preservation and
restoration activities as well as for raising the funds necessary for that
work. The UCLA Film and Television Archive will oversee and perform the preservation
and restoration work as well as properly store the collection at its own expense
in perpetuity.
Phase One - Outfest LGBT Film Study Center at UCLA
Outfest’s existing library of more than 3,300 preview tapes and discs
will be transferred to the UCLA Film and Television Archive, forming the largest
publicly accessible collection of LGBT films in the world. In
addition, material will be continually added to the collection creating a treasure
trove, both for the aesthetic merits of the films themselves and for the light
they shed on the LGBT movement and America’s changing cultural and social
responses.
“Having a centralized location for the study of these films at UCLA will
foster the critical and historical study of LGBT struggles at a time when they
have assumed an ever-larger role in American culture,” said UCLA Film and
Television Archive Director Timothy Kittleson.
To facilitate public access to the Outfest LGBT Film Study Center at UCLA,
many of the rarest titles on-hand will be digitized; and the Archive will create
on-line finding aids and study guides for searching the catalog and conducting
research.
Phase Two - Preservation and Restoration
Research by Outfest has already yielded a startling number of highly significant
LGBT titles that likely have no viable archive or exhibition prints available.
These works include Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s Academy Award-winning
AIDS quilt documentary COMMON THREADS (1989); Bill Sherwood’s trailblazing
AIDS-themed romantic comedy PARTING GLANCES (1986), featuring Steve Buscemi’s
first starring role; and BEFORE STONEWALL (1984), John Scagliotti and Greta
Schiller’s landmark documentary, chronicling the early history of the
gay and lesbian civil rights movement.
To ensure the survival of important works, the Outfest Legacy Project for LGBT
Film Preservation will establish a collection of archive-quality 16mm and 35mm
prints at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Print donations will
be solicited from filmmakers, collectors and distributors and new prints will
be made of titles whose components are intact and accessible.
In addition to ensuring the creation and preservation of archival-quality prints,
the Legacy Project will strike additional prints for limited non-commercial
public exhibition at nonprofit film festivals and screening series worldwide,
ensuring that audiences continue to have access to these works in their original
medium.
When the components of notable LGBT titles are degraded, altered or missing,
the Legacy Project will work to raise funds to restore the film and bring it
as close as possible to its initial release form. Outfest’s preliminary
research has identified several candidates in desperate need of restoration
to prevent the ultimate loss of the work itself. Perhaps most prominent
of these endangered films is WORD IS OUT (Rob Epstein, 1978), the first feature-length
documentary about LGBT identity made by gay filmmakers.
Public Education
Addressing the woeful condition of independent LGBT film prints and maintaining
a publicly accessible collection will be the primary goals of the Outfest Legacy
Project for LGBT Film Preservation. However, the Legacy Project will also initiate
discussions and activities designed to call attention to these issues and to
help prevent the situation from worsening. In the spring of 2006, the
Archive Research and Study Center and Outfest will co-sponsor a symposium, “Out
of the Closet – Into the Vaults”, bringing together a panel of
filmmakers and film archivists to discuss the challenges of insuring the survival
and accessibility of LGBT films after they have completed their festival circuit
runs.
By playing a convening role among film preservationists, the entertainment
industry and the LGBT community, the UCLA Film and Television Archive and Outfest
will help insure that the important legacy of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
film survives and flourishes.
Outfest
Outfest is a leading showcase for diverse, international gay, lesbian,
bisexual and transgender film and video. Since 1982, Outfest has presented
over 4,000 film and video titles for audiences of more than half a million
people. Outfest’s programs include The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian
Film Festival – the oldest and largest continuous film festival in Los
Angeles, featuring more than 200 feature and short films, nine venues and admissions
of over 45,000 people Outfest 2005 begins today, July 7, and continues through
July 18, 2005.
UCLA Film and Television Archive
The UCLA Film and Television Archive is internationally renowned for its
pioneering efforts to preserve and showcase not only classic but also current
and innovative film and television. Additionally, the Archive is a unique
resource for media study, with one of the largest collections of media materials
in the United States - second only to the Library of Congress in Washington,
D.C. - and the largest of any university in the world. Its vaults hold
more than 270,000 motion picture and television titles and 27 million feet
of newsreel footage. The combined collections represent an all-encompassing
documentation of the 20th century.
UCLA Center for Community Partnerships
The UCLA Center for Community Partnerships brings together UCLA faculty,
staff, and students with community organizations to address issues of concern
in the Greater Los Angeles area. The Center’s work focuses on issues
where the University can learn from its community partners, and where its scholarly
resources can have an impact on the quality of life for Angelenos.
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