Description

Black and white film movie with sound.

The film reveals the experience of being an MIT student in the late 1960s and includes interviews with professors Walter Rosenblith and Noam Chomsky. Students interviewed include Bonny Kellerman, Alar Toomre, Albert Gurney and others.

The film was made by David Espar for his Stanford Univeristy master's thesis. Espar describes the project in a class reunion book as follows: "My Master’s Thesis at Stanford in 1968 was a film for and about MIT. Dean Wadleigh connected me with the MIT PR office which was ready to make a “recruiting” film to be shown in high schools.

My girlfriend (Sheri) and I flew to Boston, shot the film as a 2-person crew, got married (still are!), and edited back at

Stanford. It’s called “MIT:Progressions” and highlights the then lesser-known (i.e. not-so-nerdy) aspects of MIT life."

Espar became a documentary filmmaker for television, mostly for WGBH, Boston's public television station. For 40 years he mad documentaries for programs such as The American Experience, NOVA, and Frontline. He described his interest in filmmaking as follows: "I took a Humanities class sophomore year that showed contemporary films in class (or in the evening? I don’t remember...) It turned out that 4 of my TEP brothers were in the same section and we somehow convinced the prof to allow us to make a movie in lieu of a term paper. The 16mm, black & white film we made was primitive and, not surprisingly, very sophomoric, but I got hooked on filmmaking -- leading to an MA in Film & Television at Stanford and on to a career."

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