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.