Academy Unveils ‘Oscars Outdoors’ Venue & Summer Lineup

Beverly Hills, CA – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Tom Sherak today unveiled the Academy’s new screening venue and announced its summer series, “Oscars Outdoors,” which will kick off on Friday, June 15 and run through Saturday, August 18. The open-air theater is part of the organization’s nearly 7.5 acre Academy Hollywood campus, which is also the site of the Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study, home to the Academy Film Archive, the Science and Technology Council and the Linwood Dunn Theater.

Concurrently, the Academy announced a slate of summer and fall 2012 public programs at its other theaters, including 50th anniversary celebrations of the James Bond franchise and the Oscar®-winning epic “Lawrence of Arabia.”

The “Oscars Outdoors” series will devote every Friday night to classics and contemporary favorites aimed at adult audiences, and every Saturday night to family-friendly fare. The final Friday night presentation, on August 17, will be an “Audience Choice” selection, determined by fans who cast votes on www.oscars.org/outdoors. Most features will be preceded by surprise animated or live-action short subjects.

“We are very excited to expand on our innovative programming and provide the community with a new venue that will deepen our ties to Hollywood,” said Sherak. “The events we are planning for the rest of the year are an ideal way to share our love of movies with a wider audience.”

On Saturday, May 19, the Academy will inaugurate its new open-air venue with an invitation-only screening of 1989 Best Picture nominee “Field of Dreams.”

Demolition at the site began in July 2011. The space now features an expansive lawn and an adjacent 10,000-square foot plaza, and will include a permanent 40×20 foot screen. In addition to hosting the “Oscars Outdoors” screening series, the venue is expected to serve the Academy and the community as an event space for special screenings, educational programs and other functions.

The Academy will also host a busy schedule of events at its theaters in Los Angeles and New York as well as programs at venues in London, the San Francisco Bay area and Washington D.C. Summer-fall highlights include a centennial celebration of Universal Pictures, featuring a slate of the studio’s landmark horror films; “The Science of Superheroes;” and “The Last 70mm Film Festival,” which will span six genres over six weeks. An expanded summer and fall programming calendar is available at www.oscars.org/lineup.

“These are not just screenings, but events,” noted Randy Haberkamp, Managing Director, Programming, Education, and Preservation. “We’re bringing a diverse range of programs and experiences to audiences as only the Academy can.”

The 2012 “Oscars Outdoors” screening schedule is as follows:

June
Friday, June 15: CASABLANCA
Saturday, June 16: SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS

Friday, June 22: RAISING ARIZONA
Saturday, June 23: FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF

Friday, June 29: A STAR IS BORN (1937)
Saturday, June 30: THE GOONIES

July
Friday, July 6: SHANE
Saturday, July 7: THE NUTTY PROFESSOR (1996)

Friday, July 13: TO BE ANNOUNCED
Saturday, July 14: THE PRINCESS BRIDE

Friday, July 20: PILLOW TALK
Saturday, July 21: THE KARATE KID (1984)

Friday, July 27: DREAMGIRLS
Saturday, July 28: THE DARK CRYSTAL

August
Friday, August 3: NORTH BY NORTHWEST
Saturday, August 4: STEAMBOAT BILL, JR.

Friday, August 10: YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN
Saturday, August 11: BACK TO THE FUTURE

Friday, August 17: Audience Choice (vote on www.oscars.org/outdoors)
Saturday, August 18: THE WIZARD OF OZ (Sing-Along)

Tickets to each “Oscars Outdoors” screening are $5 for the public; free for children 10 years and younger; and $3 for Academy members and students with ID. Seating is unreserved. Tickets are available at www.oscars.org/outdoors. Gates will open at 6:30 p.m. Screenings begin at sunset.

Attendees are encouraged to bring low lawn chairs, blankets, warm clothing. Popular food trucks will be on site during each screening.

The Academy Hollywood campus is located 1341 Vine Street in Hollywood (between De Longpre Avenue and Fountain Avenue, and between Vine Street and Ivar Avenue). The campus is accessible via the Metro Red Line train and the 210 Metro Local bus. Free parking will be available.

For more information about the Academy’s public events, visit www.oscars.org.

Beverly Hills, CA – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has undertaken a unique expansion in film preservation. As the rise of digital technology drastically reduces the availability of film stock, the project accelerates the work of the Academy Film Archive to acquire and create new archival film masters and prints from at-risk elements. Under the banner “Film-to-Film,” the $2 million initiative, approved by the Academy’s Board of Governors, focuses largely on Academy Award®-winning and nominated films from across motion picture history, including works made as recently as the 1990s.

“This is a moment of great transition for our industry, and we are responding to the urgency of that moment,” said Dawn Hudson, Academy CEO. “By increasing our preservation efforts now, we are building a vital pipeline of films and film elements that we will not only safeguard, but also make available for audiences well into the future.”

Until recently, the mass production of film stock required for theatrical exhibition made this resource widely available and affordable for preservation work. However, as the industry continues its rapid transition to digital technology, film prints and the film stock required to create them are becoming increasingly scarce. The Academy’s Film-to-Film project is intended to take advantage of the remaining availability of celluloid stock to preserve a diverse slate of important works on film. At the same time, the initiative also ensures that high quality film elements will exist for easier, more cost-effective digitization in the future.

“Film-to-Film represents an extraordinary commitment to preserving our film heritage on film, but it’s also a part of our digital future,” noted Academy Film Archive director Mike Pogorzelski. “Once the industry has resolved the challenges still posed by digital preservation, including the lack of standard file formats and continuous technology migration, we will be able to scan these films without relying on brittle, fragile, or deteriorated elements.”

Between 1992 and the launch of the Film-to-Film project, the Academy Film Archive had preserved approximately 1,000 titles. Under Film-to-Film initiative, which began in 2011, the Archive has preserved or acquired about 300 more, including feature films, documentaries, experimental works, shorts and the home movies of Hollywood luminaries. A number of the initiative’s preservation projects are being conducted in partnership with other institutions, including the UCLA Film &Television Archive and the British Film Institute, as well as other archives in countries including Hungary, Norway, Sweden and Japan.

The initiative’s most significant feature film preservation efforts include “Sleuth” (1972), which earned four Academy Award nominations; “The Cardinal” (1963), which earned six nominations including Best Director and Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Otto Preminger and John Huston, respectively; and “Cock of the Air” (1932), a comedy produced by Howard Hughes prior to the advent of the Production Code Administration.

Academy Award-nominated shorts under-going preservation includes Saul Bass’s landmark “Notes on the Popular Arts” (1977) and four short subject comedies from 1933 and 1935 currently on loan from the Library of Congress. Notable silent films include “The Mark of Zorro” (1920), featuring Douglas Fairbanks; “The Blazing Trail” (1921), which marked the screen debut of silent star Mary Philbin; and “A Famous Duel” (1911), a short directed by industry pioneer Edwin S. Porter.

Efforts are also underway to preserve a number of Academy Award-nominated documentary shorts including “The Odds Against” (1966) and “Naked Yoga” (1975), and the Oscar®-winning “Young at Heart” (1987), which chronicles two octogenarians’ romance.

The project is preserving a host of experimental and avant-garde works by such filmmakers as Stan Brakhage, Will Hindle, Nina Menkes, Penelope Spheeris and others; and reels of home movies from the collections of Steve McQueen, Esther Williams, William Wyler, Sam Fuller and James Wong Howe. Other reels being preserved document a range of subjects that includes Grauman’s Chinese Theater in 1926, Japanese-American life in Southern California prior to World War II, and behind-the-scenes footage from “My Blue Heaven” (1950), “The Prisoner of Zenda” (1937) and “The Thomas Crown Affair” (1968).

As part of the Film-to-Film project, the Academy has acquired a diverse slate of 35mm prints including “42nd Street” (1933), “The Asphalt Jungle” (1950), “Barry Lyndon” (1975), “Grease” (1978), “The Princess Bride” (1987) and others.

Dedicated to the preservation, restoration, documentation, exhibition and study of motion pictures, the Academy Film Archive is home to one of the most diverse and extensive motion picture collections in the world, including the personal collections of such filmmakers as Alfred Hitchcock, Cecil B. DeMille, George Stevens, Fred Zinnemann, Sam Peckinpah and Jim Jarmusch.