Gessner, Robert, 1907-1968

Robert Gessner (1907-1968) was an American author and educator.

From the description of Robert Gessner papers, ca. 1956-1968. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 122378696

From the guide to the Robert Gessner papers, ca. 1956-1968, (The New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives Division.)

Robert GessnerRobert Gessner was a pioneer in film education, a film professor at NYU, and a published poet, novelist, and screenwriter.Gessner was born October 23, 1907, in Escanaba, Michigan. He received a B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1929 and an M.A. from Columbia University in 1930. Gessner started teaching at NYU in 1930, replacing Thomas Wolfe as an English professor. In the early 1930s he was a screenwriter in Hollywood, and his book "Massacre" was made into a film by Warner ...

From the description of George Amberg and Robert Gessner Papers 1913-1978, (bulk 1940-1970). (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 641911572

Robert Gessner

Robert Gessner was a pioneer in film education, a film professor at NYU, and a published poet, novelist, and screenwriter.

Gessner was born October 23, 1907, in Escanaba, Michigan. He received a B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1929 and an M.A. from Columbia University in 1930. Gessner started teaching at NYU in 1930, replacing Thomas Wolfe as an English professor. In the early 1930s he was a screenwriter in Hollywood, and his book "Massacre" was made into a film by Warner Brothers in 1934. Gessner began teaching cinema studies in 1935 in NYU's Division of General Education, and in 1939 he taught the first cinema course for credit in a liberal arts college, "Cinema as a Literary Art," at Washington Square College. Gessner founded the Motion Picture Department at NYU in 1941, the first four-year film curriculum leading to a B.A. degree in motion picture studies in the United States.

Gessner's articles on cinema were published in The New York Times, Variety, Theater Arts, and other publications. His published books include: Massacre; A Survey of Today's American Indian (1931), Broken Arrow (1933), Upsurge (1933), Some of My Best Friends are Jews (1936), Here is my Home (1941), Treason (1944), Youth is the Time (1945) and The Moving Image, A Guide to Cinematic Literacy (1968). He won The New Republic International poetry contest in 1934.  In 1959 he became the founding president of The Society of Cinematologists (now called the Society for Cinema and Media Studies) a professional organization of film educators, filmmakers, historians, critics, and scholars. He was the first visiting professor to lecture in Israel (at Hebrew University), and he also lectured at film centers around the world, including universities in Rome, Vienna, Poland, Paris, Yugoslavia, and England. He received two Ford Foundation grants: one to produce a series of experimental films at Harvard university in 1962-63, and one to lecture at film academies in Eastern Europe in 1962. In 1964 he was Chairman of the Jury at the International Film Festival in Cork, Ireland, and appeared on the CBS television program Camera Three. In 1966 he was a fellow at Kings College, Cambridge University. He finished his book The Moving Image, A Guide to Cinematic Literacy before he died in June 1968.

George Amberg

George Amberg received his Ph.D. from the University of Cologne in 1930. He was a curator in the Department of Theater Arts at the Museum of Modern Art (New York) from 1943-1948 and also worked as a photographer. He taught in the Division of General Education at NYU from 1948-1952, establishing the first course in experimental film ("New Frontiers in the Cinema") in 1950. He became a professor at the University of Minnesota and the Minneapolis School of the Arts, teaching a variety of humanities courses. His published works include: Art in Modern Ballet (1946), The Theater of Eugene Berman (1947), and Ballet in America: The Emergence of an American Art (1949), as well as many articles in publications such as Theater Arts, Interiors, and Graphis . He returned to NYU in 1966, becoming a professor of Cinema and the director of the graduate Cinema Program. In 1968 he became President of The Society for Cinematologists. He edited the encyclopedic New York Times Film Reviews, 1913-1970 (1971).

Sources:

From the guide to the George Amberg and Robert Gessner Papers, Bulk, 1940-1970, 1913-1978, (New York University Archives)