Classic movies channel to pay homage to UCLA Film & Television Archive
The comedy classic, "Topper," will be included in the marathon.
The remarkable work of the
UCLA Film & Television Archive will be showcased in an upcoming 24-hour marathon on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) that will feature 13 films that have been restored by artisans at the archive.
Hosted in part by TCM’s primetime host Robert Osborne and Jan-Christopher Horak, director of the Film & Television Archive, the marathon will start on 9 a.m. PST Monday, Sept. 20, with “The Exiles” (1961) and will end with “Killer of Sheep” (1971), directed by UCLA alumnus Charles Burnett. It will begin at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 21.
While TCM has frequently shown films restored by the archive, this is the first time the cable channel will be spotlighting the archive and its work in this way. In a statement, Charles Tabesh, senior vice president of programming for TCM, said, “Turner Classic Movies is proud to be able to present the work of the UCLA Film & Television Archive, one of the most respected centers for cinematic restoration in the world.”
“Some 85 million viewers regularly watch TCM. So we’re very honored they’ll be spotlighting our work to such a large and diverse television audience,” said Horak, who went to Atlanta, where TCM is based, to shoot segments with Osborne for the introductions and exits for the films.
A scene from the film, "My Darling Clementine"
The 13 films represent a wide breadth of restoration projects that the archive has undertaken over the last 20 years, from classic Hollywood films such as John Ford’s Western “My Darling Clementine” (1946) and the Cary Grant comedy “Topper” (1937) to lean thrillers like “The Prowler” (1951) and indies like John Cassavetes’ debut film, “Shadows’ (1962).
The work of the archive is reaching audiences beyond Los Angeles via another route. For the first time, highlights from the archive’s Festival of Preservation, which is held every two years to present its latest film restoration projects to the public, have been on a North American tour.
The film festival, which Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan once called “the city’s most surprising, most stimulating, most invigorating film event,” was last seen by thousands of cineastes in Westwood in 2009.
“When planning the last UCLA Festival of Preservation, I realized that our cultural mission mandated that we present the festival not only at our Billy Wilder Theater in Los Angeles, but on theater screens across the country,” Horak said.
So a number of feature films, short features and other works from the festival have been showing up to rave reviews on the screens of eight art houses, art museums and institutes across the continent, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the Pacific Cine’math’eque in Vancouver. The tour ended August 5 at the Cornell Cinema in Ithaca, N.Y.
“Our next objective was to bring UCLA’s film restoration work to television,” said Horak. “And Turner Classic Movies is a perfect fit for us.”
In this video clip, TCM host Osborne talks to Horak about the work of the archive:
