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The School of Theater, Film and Television will hold a memorial service on Sunday for Edgar Brokaw Jr., a UCLA professor emeritus of film and a studio head who passed away Dec. 9 from respiratory failure. He was 85.

Brokaw graduated from UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in 1952. He went on to produce and direct films in New York City. In 1961, Brokaw returned to UCLA and taught until his retirement in 1988.

Will Adams, a close friend and fellow film professor for 25 years, called Brokaw a “wonderful, brilliant, eccentric” individual.

Adams credits Brokaw for the “initial success of the film school.”

Brokaw gained a reputation for siding with students against the administration.

Naguib Ktiri-Idrissi, who studied under and assisted Brokaw, said the professor was “always on the side of students.”

Brokaw took a hands-on approach in his classes. Doug Ward, a former film student, remembers Brokaw “working with (students) late into the night.”

“I wasn’t used to that with professors,” he added.

Brokaw also encouraged his students to experiment and produce their own material. Ktiri-Idrissi said “his classes were mostly up to the students, and that’s why they loved him.”

In one of his most popular classes, Brokaw had each student produce three one-minute films for a screening at the end of the quarter. The resulting films were “really fun, dynamic, beautiful work,” Ktiri-Idrissi said.

In New York, Brokaw established New York Studios Inc. and made more than 70 shorts, commercials and documentaries.

In addition to film, Brokaw pursued various intellectual interests. He loved Switzerland and traveled throughout Europe. He was also an avid collector of rare books. Adams said Brokaw had “cornered the market” on movie novelizations.

During his travels, Brokaw always took the bus, vowing sometime in the 1950s never to drive again.

In his later years, Brokaw strengthened his relationships with friends, colleagues and former students. He had few blood relatives, having had no children and a wife, Beatrice, who died in 1954.

Ktiri-Idrissi said Brokaw often visited him at his home in Texas, a residence where the professor was valued as “a mentor, a friend and almost a family member.”