University of California, Los Angeles: 2022 UCLA Festival of Preservation celebrates moving image history May 20–22
The UCLA Film & Television Archive continues its long-standing tradition of sharing its latest preservation and restoration work with Los Angeles audiences with the 20th UCLA Festival of Preservation. Running from May 20 to 22, the festival will include 14 screenings showcasing 10 feature films, seven shorts and four television shows that range from classic Hollywood cinema to social justice–themed programs.
Highlights include the restoration world premiere of William Dieterle’s “All That Money Can Buy” (1941), Abraham Polonsky’s “Force of Evil” (1949), film noir gems, comedies starring Harold Lloyd and Laurel and Hardy, documentary “time capsules” of civil rights movements, and classic TV with Ricardo Montalbán, Rod Serling, Betty White and others.
“The festival brings together a fantastic mix of documentary, musical, newsreel, comedy, animation, noir and drama to the big screen,” said May Hong HaDuong, director of the Archive, a division of UCLA Library. “This showcase exemplifies the Archive’s dedication to and passion for preserving and making accessible our moving image history.”
The biennial celebration, which began in 1988 as a monthlong festival, transitioned to a three-day weekend in it last iteration, in 2019 — and received a glowing preview in the Los Angeles Times.
“Can you improve on the best? Can you make the most anticipated event on the calendars of discerning cinephiles even more fun and festive? The UCLA Film & Television Archive is about to try,” Times film critic Kenneth Turan wrote. “The beloved UCLA Festival of Preservation … is filled, as always, with a deeply satisfying cornucopia of films, forgotten gems and rarely revived classics that never fail to both astonish in their diversity and dazzle in their newly restored glory.”
All of the Archive’s public programs — including the UCLA Festival of Preservation — are free through June 2023, thanks to a gift from an anonymous donor.