By Mike Lambert
Anyone who tried to watch His Girl Friday on campus a year ago knows: the Film Study Center at 305 Crown was a funky place. The film vault and cramped screening rooms were two steep flights up from the Center's office. And the half of the day when that peculiar dining-hall scent didn't waft through the air, courtesy of the center's basement neighbor, the Kosher Kitchen, the primal screams of first-year drama students were yelping through the corridors. But now the Kosher Kitchen has a home in the spanking new Slifka Center, the drama students are out of mind, and the Film Study Center also has relocated, seven blocks and a planet from its Crown Street dwelling.
Now, nine months after having moved to its new location in the refurbished basement of the Whitney Humanities Center, the Yale Film Study Center is making another expansion to further accommodate students: longer hours. The Film Study Center will be open Mon. through Thurs. from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and 9 to 5 on Fridays. "This is something we never would have considered at our old location," Michael Kerbel, the director of the Film Study Center explains. In fact, location makes a tremendous difference. The Whitney Humanities Center, at 53 Wall Street, is a long-standing campus fixture, close attractive part of campus," Kerbel says. "This area has an increasing amount of activity at night, and we also plan to make every effort to have the best possible security at the new facility."
Because it serves the University at large and aims to accommodate a range of programs, the Film Study Center hopes to match its expanded facilities with expanded services. In conjunction with the Center's relocation, the 35mm projector from the Yale University Art Gallery has been moved to the Whitney Humanities Center auditorium, whose recent renovation included installing Dolby Stereo SurroundSound with a 20-foot screen and a seating capacity of approximately 200. Professor Charles Musser, BK,'73, DUS of Film Studies, has already made use of the acquisition. "I've shown a few 35mm prints in my class," he explains, "and it makes a big difference. Students can see films in the format for which they were intended. I recently screened Rear Window, and saw things I had never seen on 16mm or video. Students can view these films and relate them to the movie-going experience, rather than viewing them as antiques," he says.
The Center continues to add to its collection of films at an approximate rate of 200 titles a year, depending on the budget. The films acquired depend on requests from different departments in the University, from English and foreign languages to American Studies and History of Art. A few years ago the Film Study Center would charge departments for each use of its facilities, but now departments allocate funds to the center at the beginning of the year, so the center has more time to accommodate their film requests for courses. Among other collections housed at the Film Study Center is the African and Afro-American Studies Program's Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis Black Film Collection, which lists films from restored 16mm prints of the 1920s to works of contemporary black cinema, including the independents. "We're a research facility as well as the University's official repository for film," Kerbel says. "People assume we're part of the Film Studies program, but even though we have important associations with that program, we're a separate entity. We're eager to have students from every possible discipline take advantage of our facilities," he adds.
The Film Study Center will host a series of talks with directors, to be preceded by screenings of their films, Kerbel says. The first of these talks will take place October 28 at 2 p.m., and will be given by two directors, one of whom will be Robert Mulligan, who directed To Kill a Mockingbird. "We had a few area premieres last year, including French Kiss and Don Juan de Marco," Kerbel says. "We also co-sponsored with UPix a talk with Miguel Valenti, CC '80, LAW '83, and a screening of his film, and we hope to arrange more of those sorts of events with them in the future," he adds.
Three times the size of the Crown Street center, the new facilities have the advantage of being on one floor, and include climate-controlled storage vaults and 12 video study carrels. Both the center's screening and seminar rooms have 16mm, VCR, and laserdisc equipment, and there is also a multisystem player, which can screen both European and American formatted videos. The University moved the center from its former, "clearly inadequate" space after the Center's activity tripled from 1990 to 1993. If for the switch from its former cramped layout to its new spacious floor plan alone, the Center's relocation was a wise move. "People used to see it as a marginal program," Musser says. Not long ago, they might have been right.
Started in 1982, the Film Study Center grew on the consistent effort of its staff, alumni support, and enthusiastic responses from University departments. Its current holdings of over 2500 video and laserdisc titles, and over 2000 16mm films represent 100 years of cinema and decades of collecting. Among those who were instrumental in the initial formation of Yale's film collection was Spencer M. Berger, BK '40, who has donated over the years hundreds of his own 16mm prints to Yale, and still serves as an advisor to the Center. As for future changes, Kerbel and Musser both say to look for "small but significant improvements."
In the meantime, the Center's activity continues to increase, with more classes held in its seminar rooms, and most recently with students' staying later into the night, proving that it is never too late to watch The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, unless the viewer plans to walk home alone.
Something many people don't know: anyone can view a film at the center free of charge - but call a day in advance. It's also possible to check out films from the center for a weeknight charge of $3, or $5 for the weekend. Students can also buy a $30 semester pass, but anyone who likes films that much should be a Film Studies major anyway, and borrow them for free. And for old-timers who miss the Kosher Kitchen smell, the Slifka Center is a convenient block away, and another new set-up worth investigating.
Copyright 1995, The Yale Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
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