Made possible by a grant from the Myra Reinhard Family Foundation.
UCLA Film & Television Archive's Research and Study Center (ARSC) is pleased to announce the recipient of the ARSC Student Research Award for the 2011-2012 academic year:
Bryan Wuest
Abstract: Filmmaker Pat Rocco is celebrated for his historical contributions to a burgeoning public gay film culture in the U.S., especially in relation to the exhibition of his "all male" films as part of the three-year gay film festival hosted by the Park Theatre in Los Angeles from 1968 to 1971. His work was important in the development of gay visibility and culture, but discussions of his films and persona often seem to reiterate widely-held mythologies about Rocco without close analysis of historical records or the film texts themselves to analyze how this history was constructed. This essay reconsiders the rhetoric surrounding Pat Rocco's work by tracing the discourse in both archival materials and contemporary histories of and scholarship on Rocco and the theater, as well as analyzing the actual films, rarely seen in the current era. His work is analyzed here through two lenses: its relationship to pornography and its relationship to narrative fiction film, in both cases examining both the films and the discourse around them to demonstrate the strategies and assumptions contributing to their categorization.Biography: Bryan Wuest is a 2nd year PhD student in the Cinema and Media Studies program at UCLA. He is currently beginning work on his dissertation, a historical examination of the practice of categorizing media as LGBT and its political and economic ramifications.
Learn more about the Archive's Pat Rocco Collection and other Legacy Project collections in our collection profiles.
About the Award
Submissions for the ARSC Student Research Award are open to enrolled Masters of Arts and PhD candidates in either UCLA's Department of Film, Television and Digital Media or UCLA's Moving Image Archive Studies programs. The award was created to:
- Recognize excellence in graduate student critical and theoretical writings based on extensive primary research viewing and analysis of moving image materials held in the collections of UCLA Film & Television Archive.
- Promote and encourage extensive research access to collections held by UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Submissions were evaluated upon how well they demonstrated:
- Sophistication and depth of research methodology and organization in the textural analysis of moving image collection materials held by the Archive.
- Originality of scholarship, quality, clarity, and strength of argumentation in the critical and theoretical analysis of complex cultural or historical issues related to specific films or television programs held by the Archive.
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