News

By Noela Hueso

Before Garrett Bradley became the first Black woman to receive the Best Director award at Sundance Film Festival (earlier this year, for her film Time), and before her work was honored with its own Museum of Modern Art exhibit, she was a graduate filmmaking student at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television who benefitted from the generosity of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

“The HFPA was a huge piece of being able to realize my thesis film, Below Dreams, which premiered in 2014 at the Tribeca Film Festival,” says Bradley, who received the $10,000 HFPA Directing Fellowship in 2010. “It was a crucial part of introducing my work to a public space.”

A consortium of international journalists known worldwide as the producers of the glitzy Golden Globes Awards, the HFPA has been helping UCLA TFT students succeed since 1982, with contributions that have totaled $2.03 million to date.

“The HFPA remains consistently proud to support UCLA TFT because of its well-known educational and creative excellence along with the school’s commitment to a diverse student body,” says HFPA member Alessandra Venezia. “We know that supporting gold-standard programs such as UCLA TFT now means a growing, creative and diverse entertainment business in the future.”

UCLA TFT is one of 13 Los Angeles area colleges and universities that benefits from the HFPA’s philanthropy. In 2020, the organization granted UCLA TFT $155,000, its largest gift to the school thus far. Funds in the amount of $50,000 were allocated for M.F.A. film directors; $40,000 for the Department of Theater; $35,000 for the school’s annual Film Festival; $20,000 for an ongoing endowed scholarship intended for UCLA TFT students who have demonstrated the most financial need in a given school year; and $10,000 for the Student Wellness Fund, which was created to help those in financial need because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

“We wanted to do what we could to help students keep their housing, pay their bills, and meet their other critical basic needs during these unprecedented times,” Venezia says. “It’s in all of our interests to help the next wave of creative artists emerge and develop so that maybe someday we will get to honor them at the Golden Globes!”

Posted: October 5, 2020