Outfest has teamed up with the UCLA Film and Television Archive tocreate what they claim will be the biggest publicly accessible collection of lesbian, gay and transgenderpictures in the world.

The Outfest Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation is supported in part byprivate university funds, as well as the David Bohnett Foundation and the HollywoodForeign Press Association.

Outfest staff will transfer the existing library of more than 3,300 previewtapes and discs to the UCLA Film and Television Archive, and will identify andprioritise preservation and restoration schedules and raise necessary funds.

The UCLA Film and Television Archive will oversee and implement preservationand restoration and store the collection at its own expense in perpetuity.

"Whenever Outfest programmes a revival screening, we brace ourselves fora print on its very last legs because there's no real money to be made from anew print, or the elements are lost, or the filmmaker has died," Outfestexecutive director Stephen Gutwillig said.

"These films represent our community'scultural legacy and we refuse to be complicit in the erasure of our ownhistory. This is why the creation of the Outfest Legacy Project for LGBTFilm Preservation is so crucial...and so welcome."

"The creation of the largest collection of media materials of this kind isimportant not only for scholars, researchers, filmmakers, and historiansworldwide, but also for the broader society," Franklin D Gilliam, Jr, UCLAassociate vice chancellor of community partnerships, added.