Norton Herrick Center Wins Knight Arts Challenge to Expand Cosford Classics

The  Norton Herrick Center for Motion Picture Studies was selected from nearly 1,200 applicants to receive one of 47 South Florida Knights Arts Challenge grants. It will use the $15,000 award to expand the Cosford Cinema’s Cosford Classics series, which showcases films presented on 35 mm.

According to center director Christina Lane, the Knight Foundation grant will enable the Herrick Center to enhance the classic series by inviting guest curators, including local film experts and internationally known scholars and filmmakers, to speak about each film, its cultural significance, and the importance of film preservation in modern culture. At its most recent Cosford Classics screening of the Ingmar Bergman drama Autumn Sonata, legendary actress and director Liv Ullmann, who starred in the film with fellow actress Ingrid Bergman, was on hand for a post-screening Q&A session.

“We are truly delighted about this support for the series, especially because it helps to support a core mission,”  said Lane, associate professor of film studies in the Department of Cinema and Interactive Media. “With our 35mm film screenings, we create a truly cinematic experience in a shared public space. We bring film history alive for new generations.”

In all, the Knight Foundation awarded a total of $2.29 million to 47 mainly small arts organizations, collectives, and individual artists who had the “best ideas for bringing South Florida together through the arts.” Other ideas included launching an artist-in-residency program over the water at Stiltsville, setting traditional Indian dance to the rhythms of Afro-Cuban poetry, and presenting a play based on the stories of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

Located at the School of Communication, the Herrick Center is home to the extraordinary collection of moving image materials that Norton Herrick, chairman of Herrick Entertainment, a motion picture and theatrical production and financing company, donated to the School of Communication. The collection consists of more than 3,000 films and television programs, including many rare and otherwise unavailable titles.

One of the major projects of the Herrick Center, which is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge of the history, aesthetics and social and cultural impact of motion picture media, is to digitize materials in the collection to make them accessible online to UM student and faculty.