Perry Selected to Sit on AFI Film Jury

Author: Charlie Goulding

Ted Perry, Fletcher Professor of the Arts at Middlebury College, served as one of 13 members of the motion pictures jury for the third annual American Film Institute (AFI) awards program. The AFI selects the year's most outstanding achievements in film and television, as well as significant moments in the world of moving image for recognition.
The jurors, whose names are kept confidential until they had cast their ballots, convened at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Los Angeles in December of 2002 for two days of deliberation. The winning films and television projects were honored at a luncheon at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles on Jan. 16.
Perry said the selection committee included people with a variety of film backgrounds.
"It was stimulating and exciting to sit in a room for a day with people -- a Newsweek critic, producers, directors, writers, etc. -- who are all passionate about movies, and arguing fervently among ourselves about the virtues and defects of various films," said Perry.
According to the AFI, its awards program is the only form of national recognition that honors the film and television creative ensemble as a whole, including those in front of and behind the camera. The 10 films selected for 2002 AFI honors are "About a Boy," "About Schmidt," "Adaptation," "Antwone Fisher," "Chicago," "Frida," "Gangs of New York," "The Hours," "The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers" and "The Quiet American."
Despite his 10-year stay on the jury, Perry remarked, "It never got tiresome, I looked forward to seeing each and every [film] and talking about them afterwards." Throughout the year, each jury member screens between 50 and 70 films for consideration.
Perry notes that one of the perks of being an AFI juror is the exposure to films he otherwise would not have seen.
"I saw a lot of films I wouldn't have had the time see, or maybe wouldn't even have heard of," he added
Specifically, Perry was privy to a number of foreign and independent films which never attain mainstream recognition in America. Among those films was Roman Polanski's "The Pianist," a holocaust film set in Warsaw, Poland.
In addition to ebating the merits of a film, the jurors discuss other film-related issues. For example, some debate arose over whether to classify "The Pianist" as a domestic or foreign film. From a domestic film perspective, Polanski is an American film icon, with "Tess," "Chinatown" and "Rosemary's Baby" all to his credit as either a director or screenwriter. On the other hand "The Pianist" was adapted by British playwright/screenwriter Ronald Harwood from the autobiography of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew who detailed his survival during World War II. Moreover, Polanski is a native of Poland and filmed the movie largely in Warsaw. The jury eventually decided to classify the film as foreign.
The only frustration Perry expressed was the difficulty in having an opinion different than the majority. "Of the 10 movies we choose to distinguish every year, I would say each jury member has voted for 6 of them," Perry speculated.
Perry teaches courses in film and video at Middlebury College. He is the former director of the Department of Film at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and has taught film and video courses at the University of Iowa, State University of New York at Purchase and the American Film Institute's Center for Advanced Film and Television Study. He also taught at the University of Texas at Austin, where he served as director of graduate studies, and at New York University, where he was chairman of the Cinema Studies Department.
A trustee emeritus of the American Film Institute, Perry has also served as the visiting Henry Luce Professor of Film Studies at Harvard University.
His writing on film has resulted in several dozen articles and a number of books. As a frequent lecturer, he has spoken in the United States and abroad on various aspects of film. Additionally, he has written and directed plays for the stage and documentaries for television.