International Arts Society Cinema Club records

Arthur T. Grant, Robert Hammond, and Frank Hoskins formed the International Arts Society in 1953 to bring foreign cinema to the University of Arizona campus community. Hoskins was Professor of English and left the University in 1954. Hammond was Professor of French, and left the University in 1967. Grant was Educational Research Analyst for the University through the 1960s. Charles Scruggs joined the University of Arizona Department of English in 1967, and became director of the International Arts Society in 1971, seeing it through to its end in 2007.

In the days before personal media, cinema clubs were formed to present foreign, experimental, and avant-garde cinema to enthusiasts. Cinema clubs were often found on college campuses, where audiences were receptive to non-Hollywood film, and where foreign language students would be able to hear spoken language as well as to engage with cultural productions from around the world. From the founding of the earliest cinema club at Smith College in the 1920s through the rise of consumer-grade video, cinema clubs exposed college audiences to cinema as an art form and a window on world cultures. At many colleges in the U.S. after World War II, the cinema club introduced the community to the work of Ingmar Bergman, the French New Wave, Eastern European and Middle Eastern directors, and the national cinemas of India, Mexico, Russia/USSR, to name but a few.

At the University of Arizona, IAS members could see 10 films during the school year, shown on Fridays at 4.40 and 7.15 p.m. for an initial subscription price of three dollars per academic year. Students in foreign language courses were given free admission to the early screening. Over the years, the offerings expanded to weekly screenings, up to 14 per semester, still for less than $10 per year. Most films were shown on 16mm in the Main Auditorium (now Centennial Hall), and after 1971 in the Modern Languages auditorium, with a few on 35mm and in Cinemascope in Gallagher Theater in the Student Union. After a hiatus 1990 to 1999, the IAS returned in 2000 and finally disbanded in 2007.

In its first phase, from 1953-1969, founder A.T. Grant saw the series as an important cultural aspect of a growing university with an international community of students and scholars; late in his tenure the organization began giving small grants from its profits to support student filmmaking projects in hopes of cultivating a film program in the Fine Arts curriculum. The IAS also contributed funds to the sound system upgrade in the Main Auditorium (now Centennial Hall). In the one year during which the Student Union Activities Board (SUAB) ran the series, 1969-70, the records reflect an attitude of maintaining status quo. The 35-year tenure of English Professor Charles Scruggs included more experimental and documentary films, psychedelic program art, revival programs of Hollywood silent films, and a 1982 visit to campus of director Billy Wilder during a four-day symposium on his work. The series went on hiatus 1990-1999, and resumed from Fall 1999 to Spring 2007.