Fifty or a hundred years from now, when film historians mount a retrospective of turn-of-the-21st-century films, they'll be assured of locating pristine prints of "Gladiator," "Erin Brockovich" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" even if DreamWorks, Universal Studios and Sony Pictures have gone bankrupt or otherwise faded to black, taking their original film prints and negatives with them.

The UCLA Film and Television Archive, under an agreement with the Directors Guild of America (DGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), will serve as the home of the newly established DGA-Motion Picture Industry Conservation Collection, a repository of all feature films made under DGA contracts, retroactive to November 2000. The historic agreement - the first-ever of its type in the industry - recognizes the archive's high regard in the film community, said UCLA Film and Television Archive Director Timothy Kittleson.

"Our reputation is without parallel," Kittleson said. "We're considered the best preserving archive in the world, hands down."

"The DGA is thrilled to partner with the AMPTP and UCLA in what we believe is a historic agreement to ensure that our members' films endure in the form that they intended," said DGA National Executive Director Jay D. Roth.

The largest university archive in the world and, in the United States, second only in the size of its film and TV holdings to the Library of Congress, the UCLA archive encompasses more than 85,000 films dating from 1895, more than 190,000 television programs, 10,000-plus television commercials and 27 million feet of newsreels. The conservation collection will add 300 to 400 new films every year.

While many studios are taking steps to ensure that films are preserved, industry leaders felt that an industrywide cinematic heritage "safety net" would ensure that "pristine prints exist for every single film produced," said filmmaker Martin Scorsese, a member of the DGA President's Commission on Film Preservation.

In the event that a film's original production elements - negatives and internegatives - are lost or damaged, the archive's print can serve as a master to produce new prints. The collection also may be tapped for non-commercial, select screenings, but only on a restricted basis.

Said Kittleson: "In the archival world this is a major, major event. It means that there will be a pristine print sitting unused and unaccessed, except for very limited use."

Concerns over preserving high-quality prints are no mere speculation. "A perfect example are the earliest films of Oliver Stone," Kittleson said. The independent company that produced director Stone's films went bankrupt, leaving a trail of missing or poor prints, and leaving him with virtually no record of his work.

Some directors have kept personal copies of their films, only to discover years later that the acetate film has turned magenta, the result of improper storage.

Storage in the UCLA Film and Television Archive will follow strict film conservation standards. The archive's vaults at the Southern Regional Library Facility in the northwest campus are temperature- and humidity-controlled.

Given these storage conditions, said Kittleson, there's no reason these films shouldn't last a century.

"This is an acquisition of a major asset for UCLA in terms of not only the archive's reputation, but also for the university," said Kittleson. "Our collection is already vast. This assures that our holdings will continue to grow into the 21st century."