The UCLA Film & Television Archive announced on Apr. 16 that the 22nd biennial UCLA Festival of Preservation will take place from Friday, May 29, to Sunday, May 31, at the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum. The festival will present recent preservation and restoration work with a lineup including silent-era films, mid-century television programs, and independent productions from the 1990s.
A total of 45 titles are scheduled for screening over the weekend: eleven feature films, four television programs, and thirty short works. These include world and regional premieres of newly restored materials. Audiences can also attend introductions and discussions with film preservationists and special guests.
May Hong HaDuong, director of the Archive—a division of UCLA Library—said: “The UCLA Film & Television Archive’s 22nd biennial UCLA Festival of Preservation is a place to witness, critique and celebrate works brought back to life as they were meant to be seen.”
Opening night features a new restoration of Ossie Davis’ “Black Girl” (1972), adapted from J.E. Franklin’s play about intergenerational conflicts in a Black family. The evening continues with “…& Beautiful” (1969), preserved from rare videotape as one of the first syndicated TV specials produced for African American audiences by a Black-owned company. Saturday highlights include Roberto Gavaldón’s “Adventures of Casanova” (1948), which premiered simultaneously at two Los Angeles theaters in its original release; “Merrily We Live” (1938); “The Magnificent Matador” (1955); Argentina’s noir “Si muero antes de despertar (If I Should Die Before I Wake)” (1952); plus animated shorts restored from nitrate elements.
Sunday programming features episodes directed by Emmy winner Lela Swift; documentary “The Unwanted” (1975) on Latino immigrants; archival California travelogues dating back to the 1920s; and concludes with André de Toth’s Hollywood classics “Pitfall” (1948) and “The Other Love” (1947). Newsreels from Hearst Metrotone News—one of the largest collections globally—will also be shown throughout.
“It’s one of the great events on the Los Angeles movie calendar […] still as exciting and groundbreaking as ever,” wrote former Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan about an earlier edition. He added: “The UCLA event inevitably includes remarkable movies you never even knew existed, films that expand our knowledge of the extent of the vast cinematic universe.”
Guest speakers will include writer J.E. Franklin (“Black Girl”), animation historian Jerry Beck, producer-director Gini Reticker (“the heart of the matter”), and producer-director José Luis Ruiz (“The Unwanted”). All screenings are free due to support from an anonymous donor; admission is first-come, first-served.
According to the official website, University of California Los Angeles has been associated with Nobel laureates and MacArthur Fellows through its achievements in scholarship, arts, athletics—and fosters diverse perspectives through academic programs on its 419-acre campus within the University system.
