The Foundation is pleased to welcome actor/director Anjelica Huston to its Board of Trustees. Anjelica is a three-time Academy Award nominee and won the Oscar in 1985 for her work in “Prizzi’s Honor,” which was directed by her father, John Huston. ARF also would like to acknowledge and extend its appreciation to its newest Charter Founder, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
During May-July, ARF will undertake major research and development activities in preparation for the launch of its nationwide Kids’ Creativity Campaign next fall. This includes: participation in an omnibus teenage research survey reaching 2,600 teenagers; a series of focus groups in the greater Los Angeles area, a partnership with React, a news magazine for teens published by Parade Magazine that has a circulation of 3.5 million; and discussions with national and local organizations working with young people. This fall, ARF will once again join the Colbert Foundation to hold the Festival of Imagination. SAVE THE DATE: SEPTEMBER 13.
ARF is also conducting a series of discussions with film schools around the country to explore possible campuses for the Winter 1999 Technology and Artists Rights Campus Tour — a five campus tour of U.S. colleges involving artists from the filmmaking community and leaders in technological innovation, including designers, marketers and manufacturers.
The program is designed to engage a broad range of students in a discussion on technological innovations and artists rights issues. Already, ARF has met with heads of film schools in Los Angeles and New York to discuss the possibility of bringing the tour to schools in those areas, and the Foundation is researching other colleges and film schools across the country for potential site visits. As a follow-up to the tour, ARF will sponsor a national competition for young filmmakers to create one-minute trailers demonstrating how subtle alterations in a message can radically change its meaning. A prestigious panel of judges from the filmmaking community will be assembled to select the winners.
Seeking to reinforce the idea of artists rights as a human right, the Foundation is examining opportunities to present a forum on this issue in conjunction with this year’s 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights.
Beginning this summer, ARF will roll out its Consumer Awareness Campaign designed to broaden the issue of artists rights into a public concern. Drawing on the public’s love for movies and the fact that filmmaking is in many ways the predominant art form of this century, ARF will produce and present a series of 60-second trailers to be shown in movie theaters across the country. In this campaign, ARF will be initiating a direct mailing to film societies, art houses, museums and consumer groups across the country. In reaching out to these organizations and potential members, who share in the appreciation of filmmaking as art, the mailing will introduce them to the Foundation, its issues and concerns. ARF will also use this opportunity to inform them about the results of a current study the Foundation is conducting on the number of theatrically released films shown on television in 1998 and what has been edited out of these films to fit them into time slots and to format them to fit standard television sets.
In April the Foundation added a guest book to its website (www.artistsrights.org) to gather demographic information about its visitors. Thanks to those who have taken the time thus far to register. If you haven’t visited our site lately, please do so and give us your comments.
