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UCLA’s Mediascape blog recently conducted an interview with UCLA professor and “L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema” co-curator Allyson Nadia Field. In the interview, Field gives advice to budding film scholars, as well as insight into her career and work on the “L.A. Rebellion.”
Highlighting the research potential available at the UCLA Film & Television Archive, Field claims it is one of the reasons she chose to work at UCLA saying, “…to be around 16 and 35 mm prints, to be able to have access to all the resources of the Archive, and public programming, that is very important to me. And I wouldn’t be able to do that anywhere else.”
Field sees the Archive as one of the most compelling strengths of UCLA’s Cinema and Media Studies program in the School of Theater, Film and Television. “Being—having an academic unit that has an affiliation with the second-largest film archive in the world is pretty remarkable too, and that’s something that no other program can boast. And the fact that we can use that archive, and draw from it, is exceptional.”
Regarding her work on the “L.A. Rebellion," Field says, “I’m very, very proud of that, very proud of being part of it, and very humbled to have been part of it.” For Field, the project was more than just scholarly, but also had the potential for greater community and social impact, which she terms “public scholarship.”
Field continues, “…getting to see the filmmakers while they’re still living have the recognition that they deserved…And that their contribution to American film history is so important, and being able to be one of the people that gets to write that history is really exciting and rewarding."
Additionally, Field even touches upon the blogs her students wrote as part of an L.A. Rebellion graduate seminar last fall, noting what a “rare opportunity” it was for the students to “[engage] with the filmmakers."
To read the full interview and find out what Field’s favorite film is, visit Mediascape.
For more on the UCLA Cinema and Media Studies program, visit www.tft.ucla.edu.
—Meg Weichman, UCLA Film & Television Archive.
