FILM SEMINAR

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Something, in the CRIMSON for Wednesday, March 23, 1966, is referred to as "Cavell's freshman seminar." What is meant, presumably, is the freshman seminar now being offered by Mr. Robert Gardner and myself. If your reporter had interviewed Mr. Gardner, as I urged him to do (instead, for example, of making me say that Dartmouth has "taken the lead among Eastern schools in the accumulation of films and even film scripts," which I said I did not know to be true, mentioning Dartmouth as the one place other than Harvard whose efforts in this direction I did know something about) he would have learned what films Harvard now has in the collection Mr. Gardner has begun in the Visual Arts Center. He could also have learned (something I mentioned as obviously relevant and that Mr. Gardner knows at first hand) what the financial and legal details of "purchasing" films are, as well as something about the intricacies of finding and preserving them.

Of course studying films is hopeless without having films on hand to study--I took it for granted, and said I took it for granted, that I was not being telephoned to confirm that. What I emphasized was not merely the need for a film library as a condition for research and instruction, but also the function of such an institution in simply helping to preserve this body of perishing work. That so little effort has been given to this is only another instance of American culture's mad ingratitude or indifference toward its own best products. American universities are coming to accept their new responsibility as patrons of the arts, and I think it arguable that the forming of a major film library is a natural extension of this responsibility. Because I have some sense of how expensive and difficult an undertaking that would be, I was glad to learn of the CRIMSON's interest in it, hoping that it would want to use its position to focus discussion and form a public which would collect the University's consciousness of this obligation. Stanley Cavell   Walter M. Cabot Professor   of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value