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2019 UCLA Festival of Preservation

The Mortal Storm
February 15, 2019 -
February 17, 2019

Download the catalog (PDF)

"The beloved UCLA Festival of Preservation... is filled, as always, with a deeply satisfying cornucopia of films, forgotten gems and rarely revived classics that never fail to both astonish in their diversity and dazzle in their newly restored glory."—Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

This year for the first time, we decided to organize our UCLA Festival of Preservation as a long weekend event, instead of one spread out over a whole month, as in previous iterations. We believe this will give the biennial event more of a festival character, but of course this is a grand experiment. We welcome your feedback on the new format. Our festival is still representative of the broad and deep efforts of UCLA Film & Television Archive to preserve and restore our moving image heritage. We have tried to put together a mix of mainstream classic Hollywood, independent features, documentaries, and television work, reflecting the Archive’s many stellar collections of film and video material.

We begin the festival Friday morning with a delightful 1930s musical comedy, My Lips Betray (dir. John G. Blystone, 1933), starring Germany’s most popular actress, Lilian Harvey, who was one of the few non-Jewish German actors to turn her back on the Third Reich. Another comedy highlight will be our Laurel and Hardy program, featuring Perfect Day (1929), which was restored thanks to an incredibly successful UCLA Spark crowdfunding campaign. Frank Borzage’s The Mortal Storm (1940) was one of the few Hollywood anti-Nazi melodramas made before America’s entrance into World War II. Another fascinating but largely forgotten anti-Nazi film, Voice in the Wind (dir. Arthur Ripley, 1944), is about a Czech refugee concert pianist.

We are proud to screen new restorations of a number of restored film noirs: The Red House (dir. Delmer Daves, 1947) is a psychological noir thriller, starring Edward G. Robinson, who has a terrible secret to hide from his daughter. The Crooked Way (dir. Robert Florey, 1949) is about a wounded war veteran who lost his memory and must somehow piece together his previous life. Like a lot of film noirs shot on location in the late 1940s, Trapped (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1949) has a semi-documentary feel in its narrative of the work of the U.S. Treasury Department as they try to run down a ring of counterfeiters.

We are also presenting restorations of a number of independent films: The Killing Floor (dir. Bill Duke, 1986) retells the story of the infamous 1919 Chicago race riots. Operation Bootstrap (dir. Charles Carey, 1968) is a film produced by an organization of the same name that helped African Americans receive work training. Continuing our efforts to preserve films in the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project, now the largest LGBTQ film collection in the world, we have preserved Gay USA (1978), a documentary film by Arthur J. Bressan, Jr. that discusses the victories and challenges of the gay liberation movement.

Finally, we present a selection of newsreels, television programs, animation and the silent feature film, Smouldering Fires (dir. Clarence Brown, 19245), restored from a 16mm Universal “Show-at-Home” print by former UCLA Preservation Officer Robert Gitt for our partner, The Packard Humanities Institute.

All of our restoration work is dependent on the support of our audiences. With funding becoming ever more scarce, donations from individuals, foundations, corporations and government agencies are extremely important for us, and I personally want to thank the many funders listed in our program notes. We are most thankful for the generosity of these organizations and individuals and hope you will join them in supporting us.

Jan-Christopher Horak

Director, UCLA Film & Television Archive

Past Programs & Events

Title Date and Time Location
A Boy and His Dog

A Boy and His Dog

Sunday, February 17, 2019 - 10:11 pm Billy Wilder Theater
The Hours and Times

The Hours and Times

Sunday, February 17, 2019 - 8:59 pm Billy Wilder Theater
Gay USA

Gay USA

Sunday, February 17, 2019 - 7:36 pm Billy Wilder Theater
The Savages

Operation Bootstrap

Sunday, February 17, 2019 - 5:08 pm Billy Wilder Theater
Theodore Roosevelt

U.S. Presidents in the Hearst Newsreels

Sunday, February 17, 2019 - 2:53 pm Billy Wilder Theater
Perfect Day

Laurel and Hardy: Fugues of Destruction

Sunday, February 17, 2019 - 1:11 pm Billy Wilder Theater
The Old Man of the Mountain

Restored Classic Animation

Sunday, February 17, 2019 - 10:56 am Billy Wilder Theater
Alibi

Alibi

Sunday, February 17, 2019 - 9:00 am Billy Wilder Theater
The Red House

The Red House

Saturday, February 16, 2019 - 10:20 pm Billy Wilder Theater
Smouldering Fires

Smouldering Fires

Saturday, February 16, 2019 - 8:40 pm Billy Wilder Theater
Enamorada

Enamorada

Saturday, February 16, 2019 - 6:46 pm Billy Wilder Theater
The Killing Floor

The Killing Floor

Saturday, February 16, 2019 - 3:43 pm Billy Wilder Theater
Stars of Jazz

Selections from TV's "Stars of Jazz"

Saturday, February 16, 2019 - 2:08 pm Billy Wilder Theater
Beware of Married Men

Preserved Silent Shorts and Fragments

Saturday, February 16, 2019 - 11:05 am Billy Wilder Theater
Playhouse 90: Days of Wine and Roses

Playhouse 90: Days of Wine and Roses

Saturday, February 16, 2019 - 9:00 am Billy Wilder Theater
The Man Who Cheated Himself

The Man Who Cheated Himself

Friday, February 15, 2019 - 11:20 pm Billy Wilder Theater
Trapped

Trapped

Friday, February 15, 2019 - 9:47 pm Billy Wilder Theater
The Mortal Storm

The Mortal Storm

Friday, February 15, 2019 - 7:30 pm Billy Wilder Theater
El Fantasma del convento

El fantasma del convento

Friday, February 15, 2019 - 5:00 pm Billy Wilder Theater
The Crooked Way

The Crooked Way

Friday, February 15, 2019 - 3:15 pm Billy Wilder Theater
Popeyes Pier 5 Club

Selling L.A. Television: Local Kinescopes and Film Fragments, 1953-1965

Friday, February 15, 2019 - 1:40 pm Billy Wilder Theater
Voice in the Wind

Voice in the Wind

Friday, February 15, 2019 - 10:41 am Billy Wilder Theater
Swing Hutton Swing

My Lips Betray

Friday, February 15, 2019 - 9:00 am Billy Wilder Theater