Once Upon a Time … in Westwood

Last year marked the centennial of the release of The Big Parade, the first major Hollywood film shot on the UCLA campus. As the premier public university in Los Angeles, UCLA is the natural home of Hollywood and independent filmmakers. It thrives not just as a location for drama and comedy, but also as an incubator of unique talent and creative invention, from writers and directors to designers and composers. More than a few actors have passed through, too. 

UCLA’s contribution to film has not been limited to its role as fertile ground for talent nor to its pretty locations. In 1965, the UCLA Film & Television Archive opened, its mission being to salvage notoriously flammable nitrate films considered relics of the past by Hollywood. Today, the Archive is a division of UCLA Library and its collection of around 160,000 movies and 130,000 television shows, as well as 27 million feet of newsreels, is conserved at a state-of-the art campus in Santa Clarita specially built, owned and operated by the Packard Humanities Institute. The Archive has preserved thousands of titles, from independent works such as Paris Is Burning and Hoop Dreams to classics like The Red Shoes and Double Indemnity, and presents more than 100 public programs a year at the Billy Wilder Theater in the Hammer Museum at UCLA.

Here, a timeline of just a few of the extraordinary films, people and places that have contributed to the UCLA cinematic universe. Bruins, get ready for your close-up.

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Read more from UCLA Magazine’s Winter 2026 issue.