 He currently curates a film series for the Upper Ashbury Cinema Club (UACC), a private, by invitation, group of film lovers.Jim Newman co-founded Syndell Studio in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles in 1955, with Ben and Betty Bartosh, Walter Hopps and Craig Kauffman.In that same year they presented "Action I," the first major survey of California abstract expressionist painting, at the Santa Monica Pier merry-go-round.