See the Bigger Picture with Peter Sellars

I'm Peter Sellars. I'm a professor of World Arts  and Cultures at UCLA. I work in interdisciplinary, collaborative projects around the world, theater,  dance, film. I apprenticed with Jean-Luc Godard and my life was never the same. When I made my  first feature film, The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez, I didn't want film as something that was simply  quotidian, I wanted something that reaches inside. The film is here in the UCLA Film & Television  Archive so people can see it. For me, the archive is a very potent space of dialogue with people who came before. Where your vision becomes part of a larger vision. So much important work is  being done here at the Archive to keep these national and international cinemas alive. World cinema is not just a Hollywood image of what life is. People are asking different  questions, showing you different things in life that we never even imagined. [May Hong HaDuong] In our programming  at the UCLA Film & Television Archive in the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum we  screen International films not just showcasing materials from the past but bringing emerging and  contemporary filmmakers and communities to screen films that reflect their stories. The Archive was  one of the first showcasing visionaries such as Jane Campion, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Pedro Almodóvar. Cinemateques and museums, thousands of people around the world have accessed the collection, over 500,000 items. The stakes of cinema culture are so high. A big screen is necessary to remind people you're living in a big picture. [Sellars] When I first came to LA and was working with the Archive, we made this incredible program of revolutionary cinema in Iran. When we first proposed showing revolutionary film in  1990, there was a lot of controversy. A lot of people said first of all, there will be violence  if you show these films and second of all, no one will come. The lines were around Melnitz Hall. They  had to do triple showings because so many people wanted to see what was happening in Iran. So we  saw our first Makhmalbaf, Kiarostami at the Archive. [Sellars] What moment does the image become something  you'll never forget your entire life. There has to be a context, a social setting,  a political moment that's when film opens literally a portal into the next phase of your  life. The Archive is about the electricity of those connections, about the vision, dimension.  How does all of America start seeing Chinese film, West African cinema, Egyptian silent film? The Archive has historically supported these films, shown them, preserved them. UCLA became  the place to discuss cinema in dialogue that treats people as equals. Most human beings  are not believed when they tell you what they've been through. Film is the witness. A camera can go  in and testify. We have it on film so believe it. I love that.