UCLA Newsroom: “We’re Alive” Named to National Film Registry for 2023
By Marisa Soto
Six films with UCLA ties — most made by students and three preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive — are among 25 films entering the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2023. The films were chosen for the annual list because of their cultural, historic or aesthetic importance to the nation’s film heritage.
One of this year’s selections, which was largely unknown until the Archive’s recent restoration, is “We’re Alive” (1974), made by UCLA graduate students Kathy Levitt, Michie Gleason and Christine Lesiak and women incarcerated at the California Institution for Women in Chino, California.
“The documentary film shares the voices of a marginalized community rarely humanized in mainstream media and is likely the only film ever named to the national list made by people in prison,” said May Hong HaDuong, director of the Archive, a division of UCLA Library. “Few films bring to light the stark parallels between prison conditions in the 1970s and today.”
Earlier this year, the Archive co-presented the restoration premiere of the film with the UCLA Center for the Study of Women | Barbra Streisand Center. Following the screening, a panel discussion with the filmmakers and members of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners underscored the power of the stories of incarcerated women.
“We are grateful … especially to the women you meet in the film,” Levitt said. “Their words were powerful in 1974, and they continue to resonate today. The dedication of the film still holds: ‘To all the women before. To all the women after. From the women now.’”
