UEA alumni restores Hollywood classic for global rerelease
By: Communications
One of UEA's alumni, Tessa Idlewine, has led the 50th anniversary restoration of Hollywood classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). Tessa, who is Senior Film Preservationist at the Academy Film Archive in Los Angeles, says her time on the UEA MA Film Studies with Film Archiving directly informed her current role.
She explains, “I feel so fortunate for my time at UEA… Coming from the US to Norwich, I was a bit nervous and unsure about my future, but it really didn’t take long for me to feel completely supported and comfortable. It was truly the perfect environment to learn and grow.”
Tessa sees the combination of her MA and her volunteer work at UEA’s East Anglian Film Archive (EAFA) as “what really set me up for success.”
One of EAFA’s archive staff, James Layton, helped Tessa get in touch with the Academy Film Archive: undertaking an internship as part of her MA course led to a full-time position a few months after completion.
Tessa praised the teaching and support she received on her course, explaining: “I am still so grateful to my professors, the EAFA staff, and in particular to my advisor, Keith Johnston, for all they had to teach me!”
Professor Keith Johnston responded: “It has been great to see Tessa go on to such amazing work at the Academy Film Archive. A lot of our UEA Film alumni work in film and media archives and their role can often be overlooked – it is fantastic that Tessa is getting some well-deserved credit for her amazing film preservation work.”
Tessa led the 4k restoration of Cuckoo’s Nest which was premiered at Cannes Film Festival and is now being released to cinemas worldwide.
Tessa explains, “I’ve now been at the Academy for 13 years and have been so lucky to oversee numerous major film restorations, with the most recent being One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, just in time for its 50th anniversary. As someone who was born and raised in Oregon, it was a real pleasure to work on a masterpiece that was set and filmed there and I consider it a true career highlight to be connected, in some small, tiny way, to the legacy of this well-loved classic.”
UEA's Dr Tim Snelson, who wrote about the film in his recent book, Demons of the Mind: Psychiatry and Cinema in the Long 1960s, said: “Fifty years on, Cuckoo's Nest is still the most influential and recognised psychiatric film, continuing to shape public perceptions and contemporary mental health practice.”
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was restored by the Academy Film Archive. The restoration funding provided by Teatro Della Pace Films with special thanks to Paul Zaentz.