Advance tickets are available to UAM Members beginning February 1 at the PFA business office during business hours, and at the box office during evening programs. A new print of this beautiful film, struck from the original color negative, opens theatrically next week at the Castro Theater. Our benefit premiere screening is presented by Turner Entertainment Company, with special thanks to Richard May, Head of Technical Services. Proceeds will be used to match a Challenge Grant from the California Arts Council. Gone with the Wind is a legendary film all around, and probably the most popular motion picture ever made. Film historian and UC Berkeley Professor Albert Johnson will address its impact in terms of film history and, just possibly, answer the question: Why do viewers all over the world still "give a damn"? Based on the century's best-read American novel, Gone With the Wind was a movie whose reputation preceded it, to say the least. (Then-critic Pare Lorentz wrote of "the most incredible publicity campaign about anything we've known in a decade; and that includes Prohibition, elections and wars.") The search for a screen Scarlett O'Hara became a national pastime (according to The MGM Story, when Norma Shearer was offered the part and, one month later, turned it down, the New York Times published an editorial regretting her decision!). In the end, the film survived three directors and as many scripts. But, with its delicate colors, exquisite crane shots, and stunning production design, Gone With the Wind remains a testament to the technical resources of the studio production system to do what it always set out to do: tell a story.