Rosen’s work delves into film’s past and future
By Christopher Saroki
Jan. 6, 2003 9:00 p.m.
Robert Rosen, dean of UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and
Television, doesn’t just sit, aloof, in his office doing
administrative work.
Last year, he helped create the student-run television program
“UCLA: Next,” a magazine style television series
focusing on UCLA. Besides securing money and equipment for the
project, Rosen also reviews old movies on the show in a segment
called “A Second Look at the Movies,” covering
everything from “Terminator 2″ to “Zoot
Suit.”
“There are movies from the past that are alive and
compelling to watch in the present. To get people not only to see
these older films, but to see them with fresh eyes and see their
contemporary relevance, is a mission,” Rosen said.
Rosen is no stranger to film criticism. He reviewed movies for
ten years on the local National Public Radio affiliate in Los
Angeles.
In 1975, while teaching at UCLA, he was appointed the director
of the Film and Television Archive. Over a period of 25 years, his
hard work and leadership helped turn the small study library into
one of the largest film archives in the world.
“NYU and USC are wonderful film schools, but they
don’t have that same organic relationship to a theater
department, or to an archive, as we do,” Rosen said.
“Our goal is not simply to develop people who will fit
into the existing film and television industry, but the people who
take risks, innovate, and transform it,” Rosen added.
Rosen started his career as a history professor, a background
which helped him turn to his current film preservation work. Rosen
has worked with Martin Scorsese and other filmmakers of the past 40
years to establish The Film Foundation, an organization dedicated
to preserving American film history via memorabilia, scripts,
notes, and, of course, films.
He still plays an active role in the organization as the chair
of the Archivists Council.
“We can free up filmmakers and other creative people to
find their own personal voice by exposing them to the breadth and
depth of creativity in the past, so that they have a broader sense
of the options that are out there for solving story telling
problems,” Rosen said.
The past is not isolated, and Rosen hopes it will give us a
glimpse of the future.
“There was a time in the 1890s, when new media meant
movies. There was a time in the 1950s, for most people, when new
media meant television. There will be new media forms in the future
““ that you know with absolute certainty. We want to be ahead
of the curve in thinking through what they’re going to be
like,” Rosen said.
