UCLA to establish gay film archive
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-07-14 15:30

The UCLA Film and Television Archive wants to create the largest publicly accessible collection of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender films in the world.

It has joined forces with Outfest, an annual gay film festival in Los Angeles, to create the Outfest Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation.

Since most gay films of the past 30 years have been independently produced, they are in danger of being lost without a program dedicated to their preservation.

"Whenever Outfest programs a revival screening, we brace ourselves for a print on its very last legs because there's no real money to be made from a new print, or the elements are lost, or the filmmaker has died," Outfest executive director Stephen Gutwillig said.

"These films represent our community's cultural legacy and we refuse to be complicit in the erasure of our own history."

Outfest will be responsible for identifying and prioritizing preservation and restoration activities as well as for raising the funds necessary for that work. The UCLA Film and Television Archive will oversee and perform the preservation and restoration work as well as properly store the collection at its own expense in perpetuity.

The program will begin with Outfest's existing library of more than 3,300 preview tapes and discs, which will be transferred to the archive, forming the largest publicly accessible collection of LGBT films in the world.

To ensure the survival of important works -- such as Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's 1989 documentary "Common Threads," Bill Sherwood's 1986 romantic comedy "Parting Glances" and John Scagliotti and Greta Schiller's 1984 docu "Before Stonewall" -- the Outfest Legacy Project will establish a collection of archive-quality 16mm and 35mm prints. Additional prints will be struck for limited noncommercial public exhibition worldwide.

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