Luce Foundation Endows Film Study Professorship

The Henry Luce Foundation announced yesterday the establishment of a professorship in Film Study here. The award will continue for five years and will cover the professor's salary as well as some additional expenses related to the inauguration of a program "concerned with a serious approach to film as one of the humanities." a Foundation spokesman said.

The spokesman said that the endowment was intended primarily to emphasize "historical and critical examination of film," rather than the techniques of film-making.

The professor will not be a member of any existing department but is expected by the Foundation to coordinate film-analysis programs throughout the Humanities.

The Harvard Committee on Film--an interdepartmental Faculty group in the Humanities--had earlier appointed a search committee to find a person to fill the post.

Alfred F. Guzzetti, assistant professor of Education and Visual Studies and a member of the search committee, said yesterday that the committee "will look in and out of the academic environment." He said he expects the professor will neither be a film-maker nor necessarily hold a Ph.D.

The University already has several courses in film analysis in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies and under the Committee on General Education.