Bernstein Retires from Emory

Thirty-seven years after he first walked onto the Emory University campus as a young assistant professor, Matthew Bernstein is retiring as the Goodrich C. White Professor of Film and Media Studies and a former chair of the department.

He was the third instructor to be hired to teach film, which in 1989, was a small and often overlooked program at the prestigious university. But it didn’t matter to the then young scholar who, from the very beginning, decided that this would be his professional home for life.

At his recent retirement party at the university’s Miller-Ward Alumni House, he reminisced about how nearly four decades ago he found himself in what he described as “a state of blissful exhilaration.” It was a feeling he said that he has never lost.

“Researching and teaching and building a program at Emory has been a rare privilege, and I never forget it,” he commented. “I believe in the power of film to move us or create empathy with others everywhere and sometimes to challenge us with uncomfortable truths.”

His passion for teaching has made his classes, particularly his introduction to film history, among the most popular on the campus. In addition to teaching generations of students, he is an internationally recognized author and film scholar and the recipient of two National Endowment for the Humanities research grants.

He has made the Emory Cinematheque, which he founded and has shepherded over the years, one of Atlanta most popular film programs. Its most recent series there was Bernstein’s Farewell Favorites, a retrospective showing of 14 of what he considers the world’s best films.

He is also president of the Friends of The Cineteca di Bologna, in Italy, one of the world’s major film archives and the home of an important Italian film festival. Closer to home, for 15 years he served on the National Film Preservation Board,    which advises the Librarian of Congress about which American films should be preserved each year for their cultural and historical importance.

Bernstein was one of the most important founders of the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival (AJFF) over a quarter-century ago and a key to its growth over the years. He’s been a long-time board member and financial supporter of the festival, and each year introduces several films, interviews film makers and stars, and helps promote the annual event across the city.

For the past 11 years, he has joined this writer in creating Bernstein and Bahr’s Best Bets, a program which helps festival goers make their choices from the many films that are offered each year.

At the retirement celebration, Kenny Blank, AJFF executive and artistic director, almost since its inception, spoke admiringly of the personal qualities that the Emory professor brings to his work with others.

“There is deep humanity at the core of everything he does,” Blank said. “He is compassionate, generous, empathetic, a true believer in what is good and right in the world, and that comes through in how he treats people, how he listens and how he engages, it is always genuine. It is always heartfelt.”

Those words were echoed by the many friends and colleagues who crowded into the Emory reception. As a personal tribute, Scott Garner, who teaches media courses at Emory, has underwritten, with his husband, Phillippe Maigret, the Matthew H. Bernstein Endowed Scholarship for Film and Media.

“It’s an investment for us in future students,” Garner explained. “It’s for the relationships that he’s cultivated and in the future that he has helped make possible for this generation of students that we currently shepherd through our university system.”

Over the years, Bernstein has seen Emory’s film and media program grow. From the three faculty members in cramped offices as part of the Emory theater program in 1989, it has become a thriving academic discipline with a faculty of 21.

In addition to offering an undergraduate major, there is a program with the Goizueta Business School offering a concentration in film and media management. This year, the department opened the university’s first media production center at the Emory Point Center.

Bernstein’s career has coincided with an enormous growth in the study and understanding and distribution patterns of new media. Today, the development of artificial intelligence programs is having a profound impact on the moving image and is forcing a reappraisal of how we perceive reality in what we see on our video screens.

All of which is likely to keep Matthew Bernstein busy long past his retirement. He’s working on two books: one, with Eddie Von Mueller about a history of Columbia Pictures, and another on the history of moviegoing in Atlanta’s segregated past. And, there’s always next year’s AJFF.