With the 2014 Oscars over, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences can get back to work as usual.
It’s easy to overlook all the work the Academy does, from the Margaret Herrick research library and archives, ongoing panels, screenings, talks, Nicholls screenwriting fellowships and student awards. The Academy’s cultural and educational wing – the Academy Foundation – annually grants $1 million to cultural organizations and film festivals throughout the U.S. and abroad, as well as the Academy’s Educational Grants Committee’s Academy Film Scholars.
This year they have selected Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator Emeritus at the Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Film, a grant to explore the life and career of vanguard independent filmmaker Shirley Clarke, and James O. Naremore, Chancellors’ Professor Emeritus in the English department at Indiana University, to delve into the socially conscious films of L.A. pioneer activist Charles Burnett.
The Educational Grants Committee will present the first half of the scholars’ $25,000 grant awards at a private luncheon on Monday, March 17.
Kardish’s “Shirley Clarke: The Original Chelsea Girl,” is the first book-length critical biography of the avant-garde New York film and video artist who chose unconventional subjects and ways of presenting them.
Naremore’s two-part “The Cinema of Charles Burnett” will look at the filmmaker’s work in the contexts of the Hollywood film industry and the work of other black filmmakers, with special attention to his leading role in the “L.A. Rebellion” of the 1970s. The book also will offer a complete, annotated filmography, with detailed analyses of Burnett’s major works.
Kardish and Naremore join 13 other Academy film scholars who are currently working on projects, below.
Since the Film Scholars program’s founding in 1999, the Academy film scholars who have completed projects include Cari Beauchamp; Donald Crafton, University of Notre Dame; Peter Decherney, University of Pennsylvania; Thomas Doherty, Brandeis University; Richard B. Jewell, University of Southern California; Peter Lev, Towson University; Scott MacDonald, Hamilton College; Dana Polan, New York University; David Rodowick, Harvard University; and Steven J. Ross, University of Southern California.
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