Forwarded by Jeremy Butler. ______________________________ Forward Header __________________________________ Subject: Calvin Pryluck, 1924-96 Author: [log in to unmask] Date: 12/28/96 1:28 PM I'm sharing with you an obituary I've sent to the UFVA Digest and the UFVA Journal: Calvin Pryluck 1924-1996 On December 15th, 1996, Cal Pryluck died, just a month shy of turning 72 years old. Probably the first time Cal was shy about anything. I met him in 1969, both of us beginning Ph.D. students at the University of Iowa. He was a good twenty years older than the rest of us and, with Dudley Andrew, assumed the role of master teacher: Ted Perry and Ray Fielding had recently left Iowa, and graduate students were led for a year by Dudley and Cal and a sprinkling of visiting profs-it was an exciting way to learn, the lunatics running the asylum. There was Joe Anderson, and Chuck Berg, and David Bordwell, and Don Fredericksen, Chris Koch, Dennis Lynch, Ed Small, others. Cal taught production and talked mostly about theory; we all took theory courses from Dudley while we wondered about production. It was the time of social protest, against Viet Nam, against social injustice in general, and Cal was a sage guide amidst all the ferment. I remember the night after the Kent State massacre, when Cal and I served watch over Iowa's Old Armory housing the Ph.D. students (and their dissertations), assuming that the growing protests might aim their incendiary wrath at a building with such an offensive name. We spent the night just jawing, gulping coffee to stay awake, and getting to know each others souls. He became my uncle, my older brother, at times my surrogate dad, always my friend and my fiercest critic. In the '60s, for a white middle-aged couple of Eastern European heritage, to arrive in Iowa City fresh from Purdue, with their two adopted African-American children-well, cultures were bound to clash and demand reassessment of deeply-seeded prejudice. Cal and Naomi's strength and commitment were undaunted and often awe-inspiring. They were your basic big city Jews, raised in that era when Marxism was simply Communism, when Sacco and Vanzetti, the Scottsboro boys, the Rosenbergs were the outward and visible sign of a deep and insidiously hateful prejudice. Cal's educational heritage included the rough-and-tumble New York City school system, NYU, UCLA, Penn: he'd been there, done that, and was never reticent about sharing what he had learned. His "Toward a Psycholinguistics of Cinema," co-authored with Richard Snow (1967), and "Structure and Function in Educational Cinema" (1969), outlined the principles of semiology before this perspective gained any popularity in film studies. And this highfalutin egghead stuff from a meat-n-potatoes laborer. He stood up at a UFVA meeting (then UFPA) and announced that the absence of Black members in the organization was a disgrace. He challenged the gods of academic film and bravely (often loudly) commented on the lack of clothing for a few of them. He created "Film Research in Progress" as a resource and repository for ongoing work, a predecessor to the list-serves on today's Internet. His "Ultimately, We Are All Outsiders: The Ethics of Documentary Filming" (1975) has remained the definitive statement on the subject. And his knowledge of cyberspace matters has been instrumental in moving UFVA into a new age of communication. What can one really say about a master teacher, a mentor in the truest sense? His students at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and later Temple University had the chance to be enriched by his wide diversity of interests and his strong (very strong) opinions. His colleagues were challenged by his thinking and his conclusions and his extremely high standards for proper professional and collegial behavior. And his friends were nurtured by his tough love, his candid assessments, his brusque compassion for them as worthy human beings. He could often be difficult, but that's true for all things valuable. I never published anything without sending it to Cal first. This notice can't benefit from his keen editorial eye, his unabashed opinions, his demand for a strong lead. But it has what he always demanded, a love and compassion for the subject. When I'd thank him for his critique, he'd always say, "Hey, I do what I do." Yes, and you did it very well, Cal, very well. -Timothy J. Lyons ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]