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Paper Moon (Flora Mock, 1949)
I’ve been researching UCLA student films for a while, because it became clear to me that the Archive should be collecting them. Since next year is the university’s centennial, it's a good opportunity to put a major emphasis on finding, restoring and exhibiting film and television work by UCLA alumni. Back in 2011, the Archive paid homage to the L.A. Rebellion, the first generation of African and African-American filmmakers at UCLA, which included Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, Jamaa Fanaka and Billy Woodberry. That same year, we screened some student films at the Orphan Film Symposium that involved future members of The Doors. More recently, Archive Board member John Ptak, who is also Chair of the National Film Preservation Board (NFPB), formed a Student Film Study Group within the NFPB with myself, cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, and film academics Ben Levin and Simon Tarr. We have already placed a couple of student films on the National Film Registry: Moon Breath Beat (1980) from CalArts in 2014; Thom Anderson’s UCLA thesis film, Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (1975) in 2015; and Time & Dreams (1976) from Temple University in 2017. We are hoping to add another title this year.
Unfortunately, UCLA Film & Television Archive has only a limited collection of student films. There are historical reasons for that lack. While student films at the University of Southern California were and are financed by the school, so that USC retains copyrights to those films, UCLA student filmmakers are their own producers and have not been obligated to deposit prints of their work at the Archive. That wasn’t always the case. Until the very late 1960s, UCLA was involved in financing student films. However, Department Chair Colin Young made the decision to ask students to produce their own films, because he was afraid the university might begin censoring student work, given the intense political discourses surrounding Angela Davis and others. It was an understandable decision at the time, but it also freed students from the obligation to deposit a copy of their film at the Archive. As a result, UCLA has quite a number of student films from the 1960s, collected after the Archive’s founding in 1965, but virtually nothing from the last 40 years. We are now attempting to correct that situation.
Paper Moon (Flora Mock, 1949)
For the past two years, I've been working with Archivist Mark Quigley in identifying UCLA student films held at the Archive. Quite a number arrived as used projection prints when L.A.-based film distributor Creative Film Society closed its doors. Our initial inventory identified over 150 films made between 1948 and 1980, mostly from the 1960s, including films by Terry Sanders, Carroll Ballard, Donald Wrye, Noel Black, Thom Anderson, Donna Deitch, Chick Strand and Randy Haberkamp. Just last month, Chris Mehner (class of 1984) donated a significant collection of films made by UCLA film and design students, which we are now inventorying.
Illusions (Julie Dash, 1982)
We have also received grants from the National Film Preservation Foundation to restore two UCLA student films, Flora Mock’s Paper Moon (1949) and Robert Abel’s Freight Yard Symphony (1963). Mock’s film, a color collage of cut-out photographs set to music by Nat King Cole, is among the oldest in the collection and represents the work of a pioneering woman filmmaker and animator. Robert Abel, who became a founding father of computer graphics-based animation, similarly uses graphics with a modern jazz score to portray a commercial freight train yard. Finally, we are actively pursuing financing of other projects, including Ray “The Doors” Manzerak’s Evergreen (1965).
Freight Yard Symphony (Robert Abel, 1963)
Collecting and preserving these student films contribute not only to a history of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, but also to the history of American film, given the many highly successful graduates. They include Allison Anders (class of 1986), Paul Bartel (1961), Joan Churchill (1968), Francis Ford Coppola (1966), Alex Cox (1977), Colin Higgins (1969), Gloria Katz (1969), Neil Jimenez (19834), David Koepp (1990), Justin Lin (1995), Nina Menkes (1989), Gregory Nava (1971), Alexander Payne (1990), Richard Rush (1961), Paul Schrader (1970), Penelope Spheeris (1969), Gore Verbinski (1987), David S. Ward (1970), and Hoyt Yeatman (1977). Next year we are planning a retrospective of these and other alumni.
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