Michael Friend of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences returns to PFA with a program of extremely rare film footage by and about Alfred Hitchcock drawn from the Alfred Hitchcock Collection at the Academy.In his public persona Hitchcock came across as a casual, elegant interlocutor, a figure who stood in for the audience, and represented a comic counterweight to the thrill and terror he would create for that audience on the screen. We see another facet of Hitchcock, the master controlling his image within the industry, in films like Psycho Policy Trailer. The centerpiece section of tonight's presentation reveals Hitchcock's directorial technique, first on the set of Blackmail, directing an erotic scene in which he participates as a voyeur; then in a long sequence of Tippi Hedren screen tests that shows an evolution of the Hitchcockian woman as well as the director again precipitating and controlling an erotic scene. Films showing Hitchcock on the set counter the myth of the fully controlled reading of the perfect scenario, revealing instead the experimental, exploratory Hitchcock, searching for ideas, trying new methods, and engaged with actors, cinematographers, and others in the highly contingent process of filmmaking.-Michael FriendThis program was curated by Lynne Kirste and Michael Friend of the Academy Film Archive. The curators thank Bill Krohn for sharing his research and ideas about Hitchcock.The program: