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The Indiana Daily Student

arts

Film archive to be displayed at Lilly Library

Despite a renowned faculty of film scholars and its pioneering efforts in film studies in the 1960s, IU has always lacked one significant ingredient other schools strong in film education possess ' a major film archive. \nAll that will change with the David Bradley Collection, a voluminous private film archive that was bequeathed to the Lilly Library and arrived at the the campus last spring. \n"With this collection, IU becomes a major player," said Beverly Byl, executive director of development for the University libraries. \nThe collection, consisting of about 3,000 16-millimeter films and other cinema-related materials, covers the history of American and international cinema, from the beginnings of film to the 1970s. \n"It's a world class private collection … with many of the films in beautiful condition," said Barbara Klinger, associate professor of communication and culture and director of the department's film and media resources.\nThe collection includes more than 100 of early U.S. innovator D.W. Griffith's shorts and feature films, and works by other celebrated silent-era directors such as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Cecil B. DeMille. There are also examples of French impressionist cinema from the early 1920s and at least 15 films featuring silent film star Rudolph Valentino, whose career was cut short at the age of 31. \nBut silent films are only the tip of the iceberg. The collection contains many sound motion pictures. There are outstanding prints of American film noir, westerns, musicals, documentary films and important works from a number of national cinemas including German, Italian, Russian and Japanese. \nThe films were collected by David Shedd Bradley, an archivist and film historian who died in 1997 at the age of 77. Film critic Roger Ebert described him as "one of the legendary eccentrics of the film world, irascible and beloved." \n"Bradley was a man of excellent taste, and somebody who knew what was historically important," said professor James Naremore, a well-known film scholar who has written a half dozen books on classical Hollywood cinema. "The value of the collection is not only deep but very broad. Every major Hollywood director is represented, every genre." \nBradley, the son of a wealthy Chicago family that gave the city its Shedd Aquarium, attended Northwestern University in the 1940s. Ebert said he was an aspiring director who knew Orson Welles. As a student, he made two films in which he cast Charlton Heston, his classmate at the time. Some say Bradley helped launch Heston's career. \nHe later went to Hollywood and directed a few other films before, as Ebert put it, he "moved on to his real vocation, which was to hold strong opinions and express them at every opportunity." Over his lifetime, Bradley began to acquire excellent prints of films, which he would lend regularly or screen for guests in his home in the Hollywood Hills. \n"He was a heck of a guy, independently wealthy, who essentially just collected that incredible collection and enjoyed sharing it," Ebert said from Thailand last week. \nBradley's collection took an interesting route to IU. In the years before his death, he planned to leave it with a number of institutions, including UCLA, Santa Monica City College and Northwestern, but he quarreled with each of them before finally willing it to the Lilly Library. While Bradley's estate was in probate, the films were stored at the Film Archive of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles. William Cagle, the longtime Lilly librarian who retired in 1997, negotiated with Bradley before he died and played a big role in bringing the collection to IU. \n"Bill Cagle came from Los Angeles and was familiar with the Bradley collection," Byl said. "The idea was that (Bradley) was alternately feuding with all of them, but for whatever reasons it ended up with us." Naremore suggested that Bradley was aware of the Orson Welles manuscripts that reside in the Lilly and might have wanted his materials put alongside those of the legendary filmmaker. \nThe Lilly Library, which houses materials related to cinema, including the personal films and print archives of such directors as John Ford, Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, has traditionally been a repository for rare books and manuscripts and other special collections. A film archive as extensive and rich as Bradley's presents new terrain for the library and puts film education and research in a fresh light at IU. \n"This makes IU one of the major research and teaching centers for classic motion picture history," Naremore said. \nAlthough the films arrived more than a year ago, they are still being cataloged, and issues of preservation, storage and access policies are being ironed out by the University libraries. Byl said plans have been approved for an auxiliary library facility, scheduled to be ready in 2002. The facility will contain a state of the art, temperature-controlled lab for the conservation and preservation of rare materials belonging to the Lilly, including the Bradley Collection. \nOne project being discussed is digitizing some of the films. Kristine Brancolini, director of the Digital Library Program, has worked closely with the collection and is optimistic about making some of the films available over a network in the near future. \n"We would probably focus on some of the more obscure films, films not available and also because of the limitations of delivering video over a network, we would probably want to focus on shorter films," Brancolini said. \nBrancolini said digital video is still in its infancy and most universities don't have a lot of experience in using the technology. But even if a digital video project does not happen soon, Brancolini said the films will eventually be available on IUCAT where students and faculty can search a database for information about the films. If films are ultimately digitized, there would be a link to a digital file in IUCAT and users could access the digital version of a film. \n"Our top priority is going to be working out faculty access and from that experience, we'll develop policies and procedures to provide access to others," Brancolini said. "We're primarily supporting the curriculum, but we do want to make some public showings and showcase the films." \nBrancolini said students will most likely have some access to the collection within the next year. Another possible venue is City Lights, the free film series on campus that screens classical cinema and is now in its third year. \nBut, in the case of City Lights, matters of copyright still have to be worked out. A vast majority of the films are licensed to copyright holders, and the Lilly Library, despite owning the films, does not own the right to show them without license. While public performance rights are not needed for showing the films in a classroom, Brancolini says screening them outside of that context would probably require some representative of the University to pay copyright fees. \nOne possibility is Swank Motion Pictures, Inc., a company that rents and licenses films and has agreed to offer a standard flat fee of $125 for anything in the collection. Swank would function as a licensing agent in the case of the Bradley films, working between the University and the movie companies which own the copyrights. The only other exception for public showings would be those films made before 1923, which are no longer protected by copyright laws. \n"We clearly do not own public performance rights and we want to comply with copyright laws regarding public performance rights with these films," Brancolini said. "It's a wonderful resource, but it comes with it a level of responsibility in how to use it. I really see it as a University commitment." \nAlthough a number of film archives exist at IU, such as the distinguished Black Film archive and the Film and Media studies archive, IU remains without a movie theater of its own. With the arrival of the Bradley Collection, some say a theater is now essential. \n"What we lack is a campus movie theater which we should have, just as we have a theatre for staging plays and operas, an art museum for art," Naremore said. "These films are great treasures of 20th century art. They're a part of our history and we ought not to be putting them away where only specialists can use them. We ought to preserve them in such a way that we can also show them under good conditions to students and the community"

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