Harvard Plans Center For Study of Cinema

Harvard will build a regional film center in cooperation with M.I.T., Brandeis, and Boston University, to provide students and faculty with art films for serious research and casual viewing, if money can be raised to finance the library.

James S. Ackerman, professor of Fine Arts, who is one of the originators of the plan, will apply to foundations this summer to raise money for the construction of the million-dollar library. Several foundations, already approached on an informal basis, have indicated interest in the project.

Harvard would prefer to have the library all to itself, Robert G. Gardner '48, director of the film study center in the Peabody Museum said yesterday. But he pointed out that all four schools desperately need the facilities which the library will make available, and that the foundations will be more anxious to provide funds for a project which is not limited to Harvard.

Located on "neutral ground" somewhere between the four schools, the library will house more than a thousand films as well as a permanent staff, and facilities for viewing the films.

There are now only two libraries of this type in the United States.

Ackerman said that his original idea was to create a professorship of Fine Arts in the history and criticism of film, but the University has so few films that this was impossible.

In addition to the films the University rents, the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts now owns 125 films. This is only a small fraction, however, of the 400-500 films listed as essential for the study of the cinema in a report prepared by Stanley H. Hoffman, professor of Government, Laurence Wylie, C. Douglas Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France, and Gardner.

The list includes such films as Beat the Devil, Citizen Kane, Birth of a Nation, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Duck Soup.

Open to Browsers

Ideally, Gardner said, the films in the library would be as available to the casual browser as the stacks of Widener. He added that this policy might hinder the collection of films since some distributors are hesitant to sell films to organizations which make the films available to the public at no cost.

Last December Ackerman suggested the idea of a joint library to representatives of Brandeis, B.U., and M.I.T., who were enthusiastic about the project.