The UCLA Film & Television Archive is, after the Library of Congress, the largest collection of media materials in the United States and among the premier film preservation institutions in the world. Its vaults hold more than 220,000 film and television titles and 27 million feet of newsreel footage. The Archive’s annual preservation efforts—an ambitious, eclectic range of everything from lost silents to at-risk mid-century features, shorts, and documentaries—find new audiences in each year’s Festival of Preservation in Los Angeles and in the works selected for a smaller touring program. This January, we are pleased to present the 17th Festival Tour, a surprise-filled treasure trove sure to delight cinema lovers of many persuasions. “The city’s most surprising, most stimulating, most invigorating film event.”—Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times. “Forget Blu-Ray discs and plasma TVs. For true cinephiles, nothing lets a movie really sing like a pristine celluloid print. In which case, UCLA’s Festival of Preservation is a veritable opera.”—Matt Sussman, Flavorpill.

Special thanks to Shannon Kelley, Head of Public Programs; Steven Hill, Circulation; Todd Weiner, Archivist; and Dr. Jan-Christopher Horak, Director, UCLA Film & Television Archive, for making these new preservation prints available.

Our Northwest Tracking programs showcase the work of independent filmmakers living and working in the Northwest—Alaska, British Columbia, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington—whose work reflects the vibrant cinematic culture of the region. Whether presenting single artist retrospectives, new features, documentaries, or inspired collections of short works, Northwest Tracking offers testimony to the creativity and talent in our flourishing media arts community.

In celebration of the Film Center’s 40th anniversary, we also present “Essential Northwest,” an on-going series featuring vintage works by Northwest filmmakers. If you want to know what Northwest filmmaking is all about and what has come before, these are films and filmmakers you need to know.

Nicolas Winding Refn turned down a place at the prestigious National Danish Film School in order to write and direct his 1996 feature film debut, PUSHER. Violent, edgy, yet emotionally gripping, it established him as an uncompromising new talent. Over the next fifteen years, films such as BRONSON, VALHALLA RISING, and the PUSHER trilogy demonstrated a mastery of intense, visceral tales that explored haunted characters navigating the consequences of their own immorality. With his latest film, DRIVE—winner of the Best Director Prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival—Refn has reached a new level of international recognition, where future projects are eagerly awaited and past works invite reappraisal and discovery.