Prepared as part of the festivities of the 250th anniversary of the founding of America’s fifth-oldest seat of higher education, “Columbia University: A Celebration” is an 82-minute film portrait of one of the world’s greatest urban universities. Combining rare archival material, contemporary cinematography, and a series of twenty-eight on-camera interviews with administrators, faculty, alumni, and students, the film is at once a historical retrospective of the university’s rich and fascinating past, a complex and compelling portrait of the institution today, and a meditation on the larger meaning of the university itself. The film also explores the complex and powerful relationship of Columbia to its urban setting — New York City — which, in one way or another, it has been engaging ever since its founding on the banks of the Hudson in the middle of the 18th century. Looking to the institution’s long and varied past, its expansive present, and the challenging but exciting prospects for its future, the film offers a rich exploration of one of the nation’s most venerable and intellectually critical seats of higher learning.