Dana Polan

In the first in a new series of lectures celebrating the work of Academy Film Scholars, 2002 grant recipient Dana Polan will present highlights from his new book, Scenes of Instruction: The Beginnings of the U.S. Study of Film.

Charting the evolution of how university film studies programs made film a part of the nation’s intellectual life, Polan’s book examines the social, cultural, practical and aesthetic approaches of key programs from 1915 through the mid-1930s. The book begins with details on the first Photoplay composition courses at Columbia University in 1915, and goes on to examine other film studies milestones, including Terry Ramsaye’s lectures on cinema at the New School for Social Research in 1926 and Joseph Kennedy’s 1927 Harvard Business School courses on the film industry. It also describes the fledgling Academy’s involvement in creating film appreciation curricula at the University of Southern California and Stanford University in the late 1920s; this will be the primary focus of Polan’s presentation.

The presentation promises an insightful look at how university film studies programs developed at a time when higher education was moving in new directions and film was coming into its own as both an art form and an industry.

Established in 1999, the Academy Film Scholars program is designed to stimulate and support the creation of new and significant works of film scholarship about aesthetic, cultural, educational, historical, theoretical or scientific aspects of theatrical motion pictures.