The Justice

To the Editor:

I read Matt Lawrence's column ("Film major should be promoting film, not fluff," Dec. 9 issue) with some puzzlement this morning. He has not one positive thing to say about the new Film and Visual Studies major, which he sees as recycled fluff. (For the record, this year we introduced new production classes and two new electives, and next year we will have five new electives.) He conflates the academics with Edie and Lew Wasserman programming, which in part aims to entertain. And he claims that the documentary filmmakers I bring don't count "because of their close personal connection" to me.

The film industry has its home in Hollywood, and I am proud to collaborate with an illustrious alumnus who covers that industry for a distinguished newspaper. I think it important to mix art house cinema and independent film with guests and screenings from studios. Linda Jackson premiered The Greatest Silence, a film about rape in the Congo. Last semester Barbet Schroeder came too, and Brandeis hosted the only public forum in the United States in which he spoke about his documentary Terror's Advocate. Students were hardly unaware that the world's greatest documentarians had visited Brandeis. Errol Morris has premiered his last four films in the Wasserman Cinematheque (and, dare I say, won an Oscar for one of them). When Morris and Herzog came to campus last year, they played to packed audiences. Their "conversation" was published in Believer magazine. The two films they screened first at Brandeis have made the short list for the Oscar in the Best Documentary category. I hope this does not now disqualify them as serious filmmakers.

-Prof. Alice Kelikian (HIST)

The writer is chair of the Film Studies department and the presenter of the original Film major proposal.