ARCHIVE RESEARCH AND STUDY CENTER (ARSC) STUDENT RESEARCH AWARDS

The UCLA Film and Television Archive's Research and Study Center (ARSC) is pleased to announce the recipients of the ARSC Student Research Award for the 2006-2007 academic year:

First Place: Phil Wagner

Burns and Allen, Luigi Pirandello, and the Legacy of Modernism in Early Television (download .pdf of paper)

Abstract: The aesthetic similarities between the George Burns and Gracie Allen Show and the drama of Luigi Pirandello are a window into the complex, historical relationship between early television and modernism. Tracing the European modern theater boom in America—specifically in context with the career of Pirandello—alongside vaudeville historically illuminates the 'modernist' aesthetics of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show.

Biography: Phil Wagner is a M.A. student in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies. He is from Detroit, Michigan and received his B.A. in Film Studies from Wayne State University. He was an active member in the Detroit Film Coalition and his short films have appeared in Detroit's Museum of New Art Film and Video Festival (2004), the Western Michigan Film Festival (2005) and The UCLA Critical Media Film Festival (2007). Phil is currently researching the careers of Cecil B. DeMille and Lewis Milestone.

Honorable Mention: Alex Kupfer

Anything Can Happen in a Cartoon: Comic Strip Adaptations in the Early and Transitional Periods (download .pdf of paper)

Abstract: From their origins at the end of the nineteenth century, comic strips and the cinema have had a symbiotic relationship. Particularly with the rise of animated motion pictures around 1908, comics became an important source of material for many producers including Edison, Vitagraph, and Hearst. Many famed comic strip artists, most notably Winsor McCay (Little Nemo, Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend, and Gertie the Dinosaur) and George Herriman (Krazy Kat), soon began animating their own strips for the screen. The comic strip adaptations are significant not only because they represent an early example of convergence between different media forms, but also since they continued to be based on a mode of filmmaking strongly influenced by vaudeville, with an emphasis on spectacle over narrative, well into the Classical Hollywood Cinema era.

Biography: Alex Kupfer attended Clark University in Worcester, MA where he double majored in Screen Studies and Communication and Culture. He received a Masters in Professional Communications from Clark in 2004. His honors thesis was on the balance between preservation and exhibition in film archives focusing on Jacques Ledoux, the influential former curator of the Cinematheque Royale in Brussels and Executive Secretary of The International Federation of Film Archives. His current interests lie in further exploring the relationship between comic strips and silent era motion pictures, the history of film archiving and preservation, and the Hollywood studio system.

About the Award

Submissions to the ARSC Student Research Award were open to enrolled Masters of Arts candidates in UCLA's Department of Film, Television and Digital Media or Moving Image Archive Studies programs.
The award was created to:

• To recognize excellence in graduate student critical and theoretical writings based on extensive primary research viewing and analysis of moving image materials held in the collections of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
• To promote and encourage extensive research access to collections held by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Submissions were evaluated upon how well they demonstrated:

• Sophistication and depth of research methodology and organization in the textural analysis of moving image collection materials held by the Archive.
• Originality of scholarship, quality, clarity, and strength of argumentation in the critical and theoretical analysis of complex cultural or historical issues related to specific films or television programs held by the Archive.