Touring California
Sun 5/31 • 3:40PM PDT
Billy Wilder Theater
Part of the 2026 UCLA Festival of Preservation.
Free admission. No advance reservations. Ticketing is on a first come, first served basis. Seats will not be assigned.
Introduction by Research and Public Access Coordinator Nicole Ucedo.
California glows on- and off-screen as our warm home and the dreamy backdrop to countless Hollywood and independent films from the 20th century. The Archive is honored to house and restore hundreds of productions set in California, including UCLA student work, news programs and home movies. This program features short films and excerpts filmed by and about Californians around the Golden State from the 1920s to the 1990s.—Nicole Ucedo
Screening 1 of 10
California Scenics Presents Hollywood (excerpt)
Year: circa 1920s
Country: U.S.
Runtime: 10 min.
Digital. Tinted. Silent.
Take a trip through Hollywood in this travelogue from the latter half of the 1920s. Documenting architectural relics, some still standing, some gone, the footage guides us through Los Angeles history at the height of the studio system. Featuring the Carthay Circle Theatre, Mary Helen Tea Room, Hollywood Storage Company Building and other historic sites.
DCP. Digitally preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive from a 16mm print in The Packard Humanities Institute Collection at the Archive. Laboratory services by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Special thanks to The Packard Humanities Institute.
Screening 2 of 10
A Southland Scenic: “Fairyland Trails”
Year: circa 1920s
Country: U.S.
Runtime: 9 min.
35mm. B&W and tinted. Silent.
The “Switzerland of California,” as the film phrases it, Clear Lake and its surrounding parks and towns were the ideal vacation location for the San Franciscan family of the 1950s. In this travelogue we cruise through Northern California’s redwoods, lakes and clear skies. The magical allure of California is captured in these images, many of the natural phenomena still existing today.
Production: Richard P. Young Studios.
Preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive from a 35mm nitrate print. Laboratory services by Film Technology Company, Inc.
Screening 3 of 10
Sylvia Ashley’s Home Movies (excerpt)
Year: 1937–1939
Country: U.S.
Runtime: 3 min.
Digital. Color. Silent.
The Lauretta Edlund Home Movies collection was donated to the UCLA Film & Television Archive by Lauretta Edlund. Her aunt, the 1930s socialite Sylvia Ashley, was married five times, one of them to Douglas Fairbanks Sr. The home footage was taken during their married years. Compiled out of chronological order, the 16mm film documents the couple lounging poolside with friends at their Pacific Coast Highway home as well as some travel footage. A brief scene shows Fairbanks walking on a hillside within the Edmund Goulding estate in Palm Springs. Guests to the Fairbanks home included Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson, Fay Wray and many others.
DCP. Director: Sylvia Ashley and friends.
Digitally preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive from a 16mm original picture reversal. Laboratory services by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Special thanks to Lauretta Edlund and Kerry Edlund Morris.
Screening 4 of 10
Hearst Metrotone News: “California Gets Famed Estate”
Year: 1957
Country: U.S.
Language: English
Runtime: 1 min.
Digital. B&W.
Hearst Corporation founder William Randolph Hearst’s palatial castle in San Simeon opens up to tourism after his passing.
DCP.
Screening 5 of 10
Hearst Metrotone News: “Rocket Town U.S.A.!”
Year: 1948
Country: U.S.
Language: English
Runtime: 2 min.
Digital. B&W.
A small town near Death Valley, dedicated to the research and production of rockets, gets its news camera close-up.
DCP.
Screening 6 of 10
Popular Science: “Frozen TV Dinners; Mechanical Brain at UCLA (The World’s First Mechanical Computer); The Flying Wing Northrop Jet” (excerpt)
Year: 1947
Country: U.S.
Language: English
Runtime: 4 min.
Digital. Color.
This segment of Popular Science shows campus life at UCLA in 1947 as students lounge outdoors while studying an early computer design. Two decades later on this same campus, another group of students and faculty would launch the first messages sent via the internet.
DCP. Production: Paramount Pictures. Writer: George Brandt.
Digitally restored by The Packard Humanities Institute from an original nitrate 35mm print at the PHI Stoa Film Lab.
Screening 7 of 10
Ifé
Year: 1993
Country: U.S.
Language: English
Runtime: 5 min.
Digital. B&W.
West Coast Premiere of New Restoration
Ifé is an ode to the city of San Francisco in the 1990s as well as to the women in the narrator, Ifé’s, life. Ifé cruises around San Francisco in her car, admiring the city, her new home. Through a relaxed, diaristic monologue, Ifé pays tribute to the freedom and joy the city offered for queer life in the ’90s.
DCP. Distribution: Frameline. Director/Screenwriter: H. Len Keller. With: Celine Allouchery, Nsomeka Gomes.
Restoration funding provided by Rachael Reiley and the UCLA