UCLA Film and Television Archive

The UCLA Film and Television Archive is an internationally-renowned visual arts organization focused on the preservation, study, and appreciation of film and television, based at the University of California, Los Angeles. It holds over 220,000 film and television titles and 27 million feet of newsreel footage, a collection second only to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. It has more media materials than any university in the world.

Also a nonprofit exhibition venue, the Archive screens over 400 films and videos a year, primarily at the Billy Wilder Theater, located inside the Hammer Museum in Westwood, California. (Formerly, it screened films at the James Bridges Theater on the UCLA campus.) The Archive is funded by the University, public and private interests, and the entertainment industry. It is a member of the International Federation of Film Archives.

The collection

The Archive's holdings include 35mm collections from 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Republic, Sony/Columbia Pictures, and Warner Bros. Independent films are preserved in the Archive's Sundance Collection. Additional film donations have been made by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the American Film Institute, and the Directors Guild of America as well as esteemed figures including Hal Ashby, Tony Curtis, Charlton Heston, Rock Hudson, and William Wyler. It also holds the entire Hearst Metrotone News Library. The archive also holds restored prints of Paramount Pictures' cartoon library.

The Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum

The Billy Wilder Theater is situated on the Courtyard level of the Hammer Museum, on Wilshire Boulevard, Westwood. Equipped with the highest standards of film and video projection and sound, the theater, which cost $7.5 million to complete, is one of the few in the country where audiences may watch the entire spectrum of moving images in their original formats: from the earliest silent films requiring variable speed projection to the most current digital cinema and video. Though built first of all as an ideal screening room for the moving image, the Billy Wilder Theater also provides an intimate and technically advanced showcase for events including artists’ lectures, literary readings, musical concerts, and public conversations.

Made possible by a $5 million gift from Audrey L. Wilder and designed by Michael Maltzan Architecture, the state-of-the-art, 295-seat Billy Wilder Theater is the new home of the Archive’s renowned cinematheque and of the Hammer’s engaging and provocative public programs. The Billy Wilder Theater offers one of the most advanced, comfortable, and intimate cultural venues on the West Coast, where the Museum and the Archive are now beginning to present their exciting programs.

External links

• UCLA Film and Television Archive website