This year's International Arts Society Film Program features such classic films as "Some Like It Hot" and "Paris, Texas." The films are free in the Modern Languages auditorium every Friday at 7:30 p.m.

Tuesday September 4, 2001

International Film Series provides free entertainment on campus

Entering its 48th year at the UA, the International Arts Society Film Series starts the fall semester in full force.

Thanks to the financial contributions of Chuck Tatum, dean of the College of Humanities at the University of Arizona, the film series continues to serve the UA campus, despite a lack of film availability.

Charles Scruggs, head of the UA International Arts Program and coordinator of the film series, said the program maintained success until the video rental companies providing the films stopped restoring their prints.

"I resigned, and nobody picked up the program," Scruggs said. "So for about five or six years, there was no program at all."

Following the renovation of the Modern Languages auditorium at the UA, and Tatum's agreement to sponsor the series, Scruggs was able to re-establish the program.

In fact, Scruggs says the series may be better now than ever because of the technologically advanced Modern Languages auditorium. Instead of the 16-millimeter films the program used to borrow from rental companies, the series is now shown on either videotape or DVD.

"We've had pretty good success with (DVD) image, and I think it'll only be better," Scruggs said. "DVDs - when making older movies - use pristine prints."

He added after viewing this week's film - Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot," (1959) - on his home DVD player, he has high hopes for the quality of the image on the big screen in Modern Languages.

"If (the film) transfers to the big screen the way it did on my small screen, it will be perfect," Scruggs said. "The image looks like it was made yesterday."

Designed as a type of outreach program for the UA and Tucson communities, the film series promotes the rebirth of foreign and classic films to a generation that has not had much exposure to them, Scruggs said.

"At one time, foreign films were really big in this country," Scruggs said. "(Now) there isn't that passion for foreign movies that existed when I was an undergraduate and when I was in graduate school."

Because of this apparent lack of passion among today's students, past audiences have been comprised mainly of UA graduate students and older members of the Tucson community, Scruggs added.

While these audience members have proven their loyalty by attending shows every Friday, Scruggs said he would like to see more undergraduate interest this year.

He added that the variety of films chosen for the series came from the aid of a committee and also through a suggestion box with audience members' film requests, in an attempt to capture everyone's interest. The series includes both American and foreign films, he added.

"We try to balance comedy and serious and different countries," Scruggs said. "And also we like our first four movies to be real crowd pleasers."

"The bottom line is it's got to be a good film," he added. "We're not just going to show a film from Turkey to have a film from Turkey."

This fall the film series plans to show one movie every Friday night in the UA Modern Languages auditorium. Films are free and begin at 7:30 p.m.