Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek of The Doors performing at The Hollywood Bowl in 1968. Photo courtesy UCLA Film & Television Archive
LOS ANGELES, CA (Mar. 20, 2019) – UCLA Film & Television Archive is turning to cinephiles and The Doors fans everywhere in a final call for fundraising support now through April 1, 2019, to restore Ray Manzarek and Jim Morrison’s student films. To contribute to the campaign, go to https://spark.ucla.edu/ray&jim
Before they were members of the world-famous rock group, The Doors, Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek were film students at UCLA, between 1963 and 1965. Jim Morrison’s own student film project was lost. Yet, there are two films directed by Ray Manzarek and two films that involved Jim Morrison as camera or sound person, as well as a fifth film in which Manzarek plays the second lead that with donors’ monetary gifts can be saved.
These films contribute to the history of American cinema and The Doors. Manzarek’s Evergreen, and Five Situations, a film for which Morrison did sound, will be the first two films to be restored. Any additional funds will support the preservation of Manzarek’s Induction, as well as The Blind Man and the Wino, which stars a nearly unrecognizable Manzarek as a blind man with a beard, and Patient 411: A Progress Report, which features Morrison’s camerawork.
“Film is the art form of the 20th century, combining photography, music, acting, writing, everything. Everything that I was interested in all came together with that one art form,” said Ray Manzarek in 2013. Of this fundraising effort, “Ray would have been pleased and flattered, of course,” said Dorothy Fujikawa Manzarek, who had the leading role in Evergreen, appears inInduction and was married to Manzarek. “I think film informed his work and Jim’s work throughout their musical careers,” said Fujikawa.
Please spread the word, donations at this Ray Manzarek & Jim Morrison Preservation Project link will help meet the goal to restore these landmark films. “Every time you project a film like this, you’re damaging it a little… The funds from this project will help cover the Archive staff cost to clean the films and transfer them from fragile 16-mm prints to high-resolution digital cinema images,” said Jan-Christopher Horak, director of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
The restored films will be screened at the Billy Wilder Theater in the Hammer Museum at UCLA, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the university, featuring a collection of other student films made by notable UCLA alumni.
To read more about the fundraising effort, click here.
About UCLA Film & Television Archive
The mission of the UCLA Film & Television Archive is to save film and television for future generations.
The Archive is internationally renowned for rescuing, preserving and showcasing moving image media and is dedicated to ensuring that the visual achievements of our time are available for information, education and enjoyment. The sixth-largest moving image repository in the world, and the second largest in the U.S., behind only the Library of Congress, the Archive’s more than 450,000 holdings are stored in a state-of-the-art facility that meets and exceeds all preservation standards, from nitrate film to digital.
A unit of UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television, the Archive’s Research and Study Center provides free access to its holdings to researchers, writers and educators. Many of the Archive’s projects are screened at prestigious film events around the globe, as well as locally at UCLA’s Billy Wilder Theater.
