Curated by Brian Meacham

Puppet Show
May First Media, U.S., 1971, English, 9 Min., 16mm

James Baldwin: From Another Place
Sedat Pakay, U.S., 1973, English,12 Min., 35mm
Preserved with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation

42nd St Movie
Nick Doob, U.S., 1969, English, 17 Min., 16mm
Preserved with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation

End of the Art World
Alexis Krasilovsky, U.S., 1970, English, 33 Min., 16mm
Preserved with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation

In addition to a large collection of Hollywood, international, and documentary films and thousands of reels of home movies, the Yale Film Archive collects and preserves the negatives (35mm and 16mm) of numerous films made during a golden era of student filmmaking at the university in the late 1960s and 1970s. Whether documenting injustice in the school’s own backyard in Puppet Show or painting a portrait of one of America’s greatest thinkers and writers with James Baldwin: From Another Place, films by Yale students and graduates from this era reflect a passionate engagement with the political issues of the day. From the man on the street to artists like Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns, nearby New York City as a social and cultural hotspot was a magnet for Yale filmmakers as reflected in 42nd St Movie and End of the Art World. (BM)

Brian Meacham is the Managing Archivist at the Yale Film Archive, where he oversees acquisition, conservation, preservation, and access to print and pre-print material in the archive’s film collection.