The new head of UW-Madison's Cinematheque foresees a very bright future for film fans, as new screens begin to appear across campus.
Jim Healy joined the Cinematheque Oct. 1 as director of programming. He previously served as an assistant curator at George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y., one of the world's most prestigious film archives.
"This has traditionally been such a hub for film culture and great film thinking, beginning in the 1960s," Healy says
Based in Vilas Hall, the Cinematheque specializes in screening archival and other rare prints. It is a coalition of UW departments and student groups, and it's also the screening facility of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research.
Healy is upbeat about the future. "It looks like we're going to try and pull off the Jean-Paul Belmondo series next summer," he says, "and in the fall we're going to do a centennial tribute to Wisconsin native Nicholas Ray," the director best known for Rebel Without a Cause.
The theater in the new Union South will "mean more opportunities for programming and crossover between what the Cinematheque and what the Union are doing. And then the new Chazen [Museum of Art] theater will open next October. We'll be programming one day a week there, too. It's all very exciting."
