AFI at 50: The fabled history of one of L.A.’s leading film organizations

Organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and PBS have faced the chopping block in recent years when it comes to government funding.

But the political landscape was a lot brighter five decades ago. In fact, the arts and humanities took center stage on Sept. 29, 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act, which set in motion the creation of the NEA and the NEH.

Among the the goals of the act was to create an American Film Institute, “bringing together leading artists of the film industry, outstanding educators and young men and women who wish to pursue the 20th century art form as their life’s work,” Johnson declared.

The AFI, initially funded by the NEA, the Motion Picture Assn. and the Ford Foundation, became a reality in 1967. The 22-member AFI Board of Trustees named Oscar winners Gregory Peck as chair and Sidney Poitier as co-chair. George Stevens Jr., the son of two-time Oscar-winning director George Stevens and a filmmaker in his own right, was named director and chief executive.

It was a moment “when America realized that it needed to support its artists and where a president proclaimed film as an art,” said Jean Picker Firstenberg, who became the second president and chief executive of the AFI in 1980, led the organization for 27 years and is president emerita and a lifetime trustee.

“In those days, folks out here [in Los Angeles] were very uncomfortable being called artists, because they were making a lot of money,” she said. “It seemed brash and inappropriate. It helped that an institution like AFI really provided that context for why this is America’s art form, how much it changed American culture.”

Now in its 50th year, Los Angeles-based AFI has become part of American pop culture. Bob Gazzale has been the president and chief executive since 2007. The AFI Conservatory, which was created in 1969, is going strong and counts among its graduates directors Patty Jenkins (“Wonder Woman”) and David Lynch (“Twin Peaks”).

The AFI Life Achievement Award, which was established in 1973 and is televised, recently named George Clooney as its latest recipient. The annual AFI Fest, which begins Nov. 9, is one of the year’s major film events in Los Angeles (tickets are free), and the AFI Awards will announce its top 10 choices for the best in movies and TV for 2017 in December. (The choices are often good indicators of Oscar nominations).

Firstenberg and James Hindman, who was with the AFI for 24 years as co-director, chief operating officer and provost of the AFI Conservatory, have written a book celebrating the organization’s golden anniversary, “Becoming AFI: 50 Years Inside the American Film Institute.” (Firstenberg will be appearing in a Writers Bloc conversation Thursday evening with former Monkee Michael Nesmith, who was a trustee at AFI for 12 years.)

Less a straightforward history and more a behind-the-scenes memoir, “Becoming AFI” also features photographs chronicling the last five decades of the institute. Jenkins and Lynch have provided the preface and afterword.

The organization hit the ground running under the auspices of Stevens, opening the school, then known as the Center for Advanced Film Studies, at the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills in 1969. First, however, Stevens had to figure out the organization’s mission.

“What should it be? How should it be organized? What’s the structure? He went through all the film institutes around the world,” noted Firstenberg. “They were supported by their governments, because they were trying to build up their own film community. I really think that from those early beginnings, the tutorial concept of learn by doing, study with the masters, was absolutely a brilliant concept. We’re still doing it that way.”

Under Firstenberg’s tenure, the AFI purchased the campus of Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles for its permanent home, instituted the AFI Fest and hired the late Oscar-winning writer-director Frank Pierson as the school’s artistic director.

Preserving film history is also a part of AFI’s mission. In 1996, the AFI National Center for Film and Video Preservation made headlines when it received an original nitrate print of “Richard III,” a 1912 adaptation of the Shakespeare tragedy that is the oldest surviving U.S. dramatic feature.

Gazzale has overseen the launch of the AFI Docs festival in Washington, D.C., and AFI’s “Master Class: The Art of Collaboration” on TCM. The AFI Conservatory was recently named the best film school by the Hollywood Reporter.

One of the hardest chapters for Firstenberg to write was on the well-respected magazine American Film, which began in 1975, only to suffer the same fate as many other periodicals, stopping publication in 1991. (In 2012, it relaunched as a digital magazine.)

“It had some great work,” she said. “That’s the sad part about 50 years. There are programs you are deeply committed to that don’t survive.”

Firstenberg also chronicles the difficulties in running a nonprofit organization, especially dealing with funding issues. “The political environment is very intense. You see how much you have to hang in there and just hold on.”

One program that has held on over the decades is the Directing Workshop for Women, created in 1974 to give more opportunities for women to direct.

“Unfortunately, it’s still needed,” said Firstenberg. In 2016, women comprised only 7% of directors of the top 250 films.

Still, Firstenberg adds, “for the first time, I see a light down the road,” pointing out that several studios are developing their own programs to help female directors and that Jenkins’ “Wonder Woman” has grossed more than $800 million internationally this year. “I am hopeful, but it’s been a long walk.”

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‘A Tribute to the 50 Years of AFI’

Who: Writers Bloc Presents Jean Firstenberg with Michael Nesmith

When: 7:30 p.m. Oct. 26

Where: Temple Emanuel, 8844 Burton Way, Beverly Hills

Price: $20, www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3090372

Info: writersblocpresents.com/main/

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