Yale Film Study Center

The Yale Film Study Center is a film archive located in the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University, and is part of the Yale University Library. The film collection consists of more than 5,000 35mm, 16mm, 8mm, and Super 8mm prints and the video collection includes more than 35,000 items on DVD, Blu-ray, LaserDisc, and VHS. The Film Study Center engages in the conservation, preservation, presentation, and circulation of moving image materials. The Film Study Center is an Associate of the International Federation of Film Archives.

Founded in 1982, the Film Study Center archive traces its roots to film collections at Yale dating back to the 1960s, including the historic archives of a number of prominent film collectors. The FSC is currently involved in efforts to preserve film on film and to share its collection through public screenings, to ensure that films can continue to be presented as they were originally seen by audiences.

The film collection of the Film Study Center is made up of a wide range of holdings, from Hollywood features to experimental shorts, from home movies to Bollywood musicals. The collection spans more than 120 years of cinema history, and includes films from around the globe as well as a number of films made by Yale alumni and about Yale and New Haven.

Researchers can view films on site[1] in the Film Study Center’s two screening rooms, which are capable of showing 16mm film and multiple video formats. One of these rooms is also equipped for screening 3D Blu-rays. The FSC also has two flatbed film viewing stations and twelve private video viewing booths for individual use. The FSC regularly screens its 35mm prints for the public in the Whitney Humanities Center Auditorium, the last 35mm-equipped public venue in New Haven County.

Film Study Center staff regularly consult on special film projects around the University, including the preservation of film material in the Benny Goodman Collection in the Irving Gilmore Music Library of the Yale University Library.[2]

History

In 1968, Yale began collecting 16mm film with the purchase of several hundred prints known as the John Griggs Collection of Classic Films.[3] The Griggs films came to Yale largely through the efforts of experimental filmmaker Standish Lawder, then Assistant Professor in Yale’s History of Art Department, and Yale alumnus Spencer Berger, a film collector and historian of the Barrymore family. The purchase was funded by three alumni: Fred W. Beinecke, Richard E. Fuller, and Chester J. LaRoche Jr., all graduates of the University. Although modest, this acquisition encouraged other collectors to donate their films, which then became part a vital part of film curricula.

Over the next 15 years, film as an academic discipline grew immensely, leading to the formation of both the Film Studies Program and the Film Study Center in 1982. During the 1980s, the 16mm archive burgeoned with film donations by Yale alumni Spencer Berger, Ralph Hirshorn, and others, while Yale’s 35mm archive was born with hundreds of rare prints of television programs produced by Herbert Brodkin, and collections such as those of the pioneering experimental director Mary Ellen Bute, a 1926 alumna of the Yale School of Drama.

In 2013, the Film Study Center began its monthly screening series "Treasures from the Yale Film Archive," showcasing 35mm prints from the archive's collection. The screenings feature introductions by Film Study Center staff as well as Yale faculty, and have also included guest filmmakers such as Michael Roemer, Warrington Hudlin, Tamar Simon Hoffs, Norman Weissman, and Frank and Caroline Mouris, as well as musical accompaniment for silent films by Donald Sosin.

In July, 2017, the Yale Film Study Center formally became part of the Yale University Library.

Preservation

Films preserved by the Film Study Center include Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (directed by Mary Ellen Bute) and The Boy Who Saw Through (produced by Bute and directed by George C. Stoney)[4]; Our Union, directed by Carl Marzani; To Be a Man,[5] directed by Murray Lerner; and four films by animator Frank Mouris: Quick Dream, You're Not Real Pretty But You're Mine..., Chemical Architecture, and Coney Island Eats. In 2018, the Film Study Center completed preservation of director Nicholas Doob's 1979 film "Street Music," which features performances by 19 street musicians including "Oliver "Pork Chop" Anderson," Brother Blue, Bongo Joe Coleman, Jimmy Davis, Guy Mosley, Gene Palma, and "The Automatic Human Jukebox."

The Film Study Center also preserved 2-inch videotapes containing a 1972 broadcast by WTIC of "What's Happening," a local news program that covered the visit to Yale by Duke Ellington and other jazz musicians including Eubie Blake, Dizzy Gillespie, Jo Jones, Charles Mingus, Max Roach, and Mary Lou Williams.[6]

Collections

The Film Study Center film archive is made up of a number of individual collections of the films of various filmmakers and film collectors, some of which are listed below.

References
  1. "A Mesmerizing Marathon of Robert Frank's Movies". The New Yorker. 2016-07-12. Retrieved 2016-11-08.
  2. "Royal Restoration: Yale Saves King of Swing's Lost Home Movies". Newsweek. 2015-06-13. Retrieved 2016-11-08.
  3. "Yale Daily News no. 116 April 5 1968: Yale Acquires Collection Of Classic Films 207 Titles, Mostly Silents". digital.library.yale.edu. Retrieved 2016-11-08.
  4. Bennett, Bruce (2010-12-10). "Experiments In Love and Film". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2016-11-08.
  5. "Restored documentary portrays 1960s Yale". Retrieved 2016-11-08.
  6. "The Duke, Dizzy & Eubie return to Yale in film, jazz event Friday". Retrieved 2016-11-08.
  7. Courant, Hartford. "Yale To Screen Vintage Shorts From Newly Donated Collection". courant.com. Retrieved 2016-11-08.
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