Tom Luddy and the Pacific Film Archive (CAHIERS DU CINÉMA, December 1978)

Serge Toubiana
Translated from the French by Jonathan Mackris
Originally published in Cahiers du cinéma, n. 295 (December 1978), 25-26

Tom Luddy (1943-2023) served as director of the Pacific Film Archive throughout the 1970s, during which he oversaw the transformation of the newly-founded cinematheque into a world-class – and world famous – home for cinema. Following his death in February 2023, the PFA (now BAMPFA) will hold a six-week series commemorating his influence on Bay Area film culture, “Ambassador of Cinema: Tom Luddy’s Lasting Influence at BAMPFA”, from June 1-July 15. In honor of this series, I am translating the two-part profile of Tom Luddy and the PFA from the December 1978 issue of Cahiers du cinéma. In this first part, editor-in-chief Serge Toubiana contextualizes the PFA within American film culture as a foil to “the cultural provincialism that surrounds Hollywood,” echoing of the critique of Hollywood seen in Cahiers throughout the seventies, most famously in the collaborative essay on Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln. The second part, to be released later, features a long interview with Luddy. – JM

What is the Pacific Film Archive? Who is Tom Luddy?

The PFA is the only cinematheque worthy of the name on the west coast of the United States, located next to the famous university in Berkeley fifteen minutes from downtown San Francisco.

The influence of the PFA goes beyond California alone. It extends through all of (cinephile) America, for which this cinematheque is a sort of model, reaching all the way to Europe – the East as well as the West. Indeed, how many European filmmakers (but also African, Middle-Eastern, and others as well) haven’t made the voyage – or should we say the pilgrimage, since they like to come back – to Berkeley, with their films, for tributes or retrospectives! 

Two reasons can help explain its influence and fame:

1. The PFA is the only location in the US, outside of New York, where it is possible for an American to see films that depart a bit from the conventional – and limited – Hollywood market. It is the only place where it is possible to see films that are rejected, both for commercial reasons but above all for reasons that have to do with the conception of cinema that reigns there, that of Hollywood cinema.

I should add, so as to not offend anyone, that there are cinephiles in multiple cities in the United States whose activities consist for the most part in programming films made outside of Hollywood, especially from Europe, in independent circuits or at universities. The major question is this: why doesn’t Hollywood preserve the memory of its cinematic past? In Los Angeles itself, there are attempts to break down the cultural provincialism that surrounds Hollywood with the Fox Theatre in Venice (a repertory theater), the annual FILMEX festival, which imports a number of foreign films, or the UCLA Film Archive run by Robert Rosen. Yet nowhere, in my eyes, is there an infrastructure as welcoming as the archives in Berkeley. 

Located an hour from Los Angeles by plane, the PFA functions a bit like a supplement to Hollywood, that extra something that puts to shame the cinematic protectionism we see in L.A., where the world’s most “powerful” and influential cinema is made. 

To use a metaphor, I will say that Hollywood resembles a factory without product support or stock. Discourse (on the films that it makes) and memory (rewatching old films) exists, but it exists elsewhere, separated from the conditions of film production. Hence the impossibility, even for us in France, of carrying out an informed reflection on Hollywood. 

However, in Los Angeles itself, there is an entire editorial machine to accompany and celebrate Hollywood cinema: books galore, sold at low prices, on the great works, on auteurs known throughout the world, on stars. This machine valorizes the myth, perpetuates the mythology of the place, the studios, the cinema, a little like the way it’s done at Disneyland. Hollywood reconstructs itself each year on the rubble of its fading past (Where are the copies? Who can see them?) without any mourning haunting the entrepreneurial spirit of the managers and producers who wield power today.

However, in Los Angeles itself, there is an entire editorial machine to accompany and celebrate Hollywood cinema: books galore, sold at low prices, on the great works, on auteurs known throughout the world, on stars. This machine valorizes the myth, perpetuates the mythology of the place, the studios, the cinema, a little like the way it’s done at Disneyland. Hollywood reconstructs itself each year on the rubble of its fading past (Where are the copies? Who can see them?) without any mourning haunting the entrepreneurial spirit of the managers and producers who wield power today.

Hollywood certainly remains the only place in the world where cinema is still strongly linked to industry (if we set aside the phenomena of mass (sub)culture such as Indian cinema or the cinema of Hong Kong) and the imperatives of universality – commercial and genre – imposed by a mass entertainment industry. To put it simply, for the most part cinema is not revered as an Art. And at the same time, Hollywood is universal. Its films, by their influence, have conquered the world cinema market. This universality of American cinema only exists in one sense, that of exportation: American films are exported, and exported with great success. Conversely, the universality of cinema – an art confronted by all cultures, becoming itself part of these cultures in a multiplicity of films, genres, languages, and nations – does not find its way to Hollywood. A well-known phenomenon of unequal exchange: we export but we do not import. Films are not equal before the marketplace of spectators – this is the general law, but it is particularly striking in the United States. 

Tom Luddy at work. Photo taken by Serge Toubiana.

2. The other reason has undoubtedly to do with Tom Luddy, the indefatigable curator and head of programming, who tries to make Berkeley a hub for cinema. Films come, one after another, to meet their audience, and filmmakers get to know the small community of American filmmakers based in San Francisco.

If there is someone who understands the spirit of Langlois, it is Luddy. The principle is simple: show everything and censor nothing. Be in search of something rare, something forgotten, something at risk of disappearing with the destruction of innumerable copies of films that occurs every year. In this way, we can rediscover something of the universality of cinema that travels across multiple films, their diverse origins, their different languages, and their intermingled nationalities.

In the interview that follows, Luddy explains why this enterprise is possible in San Francisco, where multiple national and linguistic communities live together.