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sought most was an antidote to the present—his present. The Old West was life measured out in ten gallon hats, not coffee spoons, and if Hart distorted it and sentimentalized it, that was because the West came to represent his own lost youth and innocence. An old Indian woman once told him: "1 can only think and live in the past. The white people have taken away all of the Indian's future" (p. 15). It's no wonder that as he grew older, William Surrey Hart identified more and more with the plight of the Indian 1 . See George N. Fenin and William K. Everson, The Western: From Silents to the Seventies (New York: Penguin, 1973), and John Tuska, The Filming of the West (New York: Doubleday, 1976). 2.New York: Benjamin Blom, 1929. All subsequent page references are in brackets in the text. FILM&HISTORY NEWS HFC. ANNUAL MEETING The annual meeting of the Historians Film Committee will be held, as usual, in conjunction with the American Historical Association convention, this year in Dallas, Texas. We will gather on December 28th at 4:45 p.m. in the Vista Room of the Fairmont Hotel. A very short business meeting will be followed by a workshop on "Teaching Triumph of the Will" with Peter Rollins of Oklahoma State University and Jay Baird of Miami University of Ohio participating. Scenes from the film will be screened and teaching approaches discussed. CORRECTION: The article on Nashville which appeared in our last issue was co-authored by Al Auster. AMERICAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE REPORT Readers of Film and History are surely aware of the amount of attention American Studies has been giving to film in the past few years. By now American Quarterly is a significant source of articles relating to film scholarship. The same interest was apparent at the Boston meeting of the ASA held from October 27th to October 30th. Peter Rollins, Oklahoma State University, coordinated a number of sessions, beginning the first night with six short films, mostly relating to folk art. As usual there were projection difficulties and the large audience put up with stifling heat. Friday afternoon Robert Sklar, John E. O'Connor, and Kenneth Hey of Brooklyn College discussed recent interpretations of film and American culture with special attention to the work of Sklar and Garth Jowett. Hey offered an assessment ofwhat constitutes effective film scholarship. His analysis of On the Waterfront was excellent. Saturday morning Michael Marsden chaired a session relating to television. Papers of the participants were available at the door and can be had by writing Marsden at the Journal of Popular Film. Most interesting for readers of Film and History, however, was the last-minute addition to the panel of Erik Bamouw from the Motion Picture Section 59 of the Library of Congress. Barnouw discussed what the new copyright act has to say about a television archive and explained that new facilities will not be ready before 1981 . Saturday night Robert Altman's Nashville was shown, this time without projection difficulties and in a cool room. The film was preceded by two turgid analyses of the film, one a classic of its kind: Roger B. Rollin of Clemson University insisted that quite literally the film was the greatest ever made. The closing of an open bar that had been serving to that point partially explained the audible undertow, which greeted his remarks. Sunday morning Denver Sasser of Oklahoma State effectively discussed Nashville's film language, using a videotape presentation. As the last session on Sunday afternoon, the ASA Film Committee presented a workshop on methods of film research. Tom Cripps, Larry Suid and I shared secrets of the trade with a small audience. The second part of the session dealt with an experimental course in film taught by Peter Rollins at Boston College last spring in which Cripps, O'Connor and I appeared as guest lecturers. Predictably enough, those present argued over whether historical context or film language should be the primary goal ofa film course. Leslie Fishbein discussed an excellent course on women in film which she has taught and will send a copy ofher syllabus (which she handed out at...

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