National Film Preservation Foundation

10/20/2022

Hito Hata: Raise the Banner — Visual Communications

For folks living in the Los Angeles area, Visual Communications is offering a free screening at the Japanese American National Museum this coming Saturday of the pioneering AAPI feature HITO HATA: RAISE THE BANNER by Robert Nakamura and Duane Kubo. The NFPF is proud to have helped support its preservation. Tickets are free but seats are limited. You can order them at the link below.

A landmark project directed by Robert A. Nakamura and Duane Kubo, HITO HATA: RAISE THE BANNER (1980) is the first feature-length film made by and about Asian Pacific Americans. Capturing the contributions and hardships of Japanese Americans from the turn-of-the-20th century, the film centers on Oda....

09/23/2022

If you live in or near Cleveland, don't miss the premiere of the newly preserved sponsored film THE HEART OF CLEVELAND (1924), which was recently saved by the Hagley Museum and Library with support from the NFPF. It screens with Erich von Stroheim's classic GREED next Friday, September 30th at 7pm at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque. More details at https://www.cia.edu/cinematheque/film-schedule/2022/09/greed.

02/11/2022

Treasures DVD sets are now available from the NFPF. We are thrilled to be able to share these amazing collections directly with you.

https://filmpreservation.myshopify.com/

01/22/2022

NFPF on TikTok

The NFPF is on Tik Tok and Instagram. Lots of announcements and exciting access projects on the horizon. Stay tuned.

The NFPF is on Tik Tok!

01/21/2022

Register for a 2022 NFPF Grant by March 25th!

The NFPF offers two types of federal cash grants that support the preservation of historically and culturally significant American films. Completed applications will be due Friday, April 29th.

Please visit our website for more information about our Basic Preservation Grant and Matching Grant.

https://www.filmpreservation.org/nfpf-grants/basic-preservation-grants

https://www.filmpreservation.org/nfpf-grants/matching-grants

12/10/2021

National Film Preservation Foundation: The Chalk Line (1916)

Today the NFPF added new films to its online screening room including 1916's THE CHALK LINE, three episodes of THE SCREEN LETTERBOX, and THE CAMERA CURE. All of these digital copies come from fim preservation work done by the George Eastman Museum and funded by the NFPF.

Please take a look and get ready for lots of new streaming films in 2022!

https://www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/screening-room/the-chalk-line-1916

We hope you will enjoy the following film. Please consider making a donation so that we can continue preserving films and presenting them on our Web site. Thank you!

11/03/2021

National Film Preservation FoundationSeven Experimental Classics To Be Preserved Through Avant-Garde Masters Grants

Works by Ken Jacobs, Cathy Cook, Ron Rice, and Roger Jacoby to be saved and screened.

Seven films to be preserved through the NFPF and The Film Foundation's Avant-Garde Masters program, funded by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

During his short life Ron Rice (1935–64) completed only three films. Senseless (1962), his second and least seen work, arose from an attempt to film the counterculture in Venice, California, and a utopian commune in Mexico. Rice combined home movie–style footage, street photography, landscapes s...

06/17/2021

National Film Preservation Foundation64 Orphan Films to be Preserved Through the NFPF’s 2021 Grants

64 amazing films selected for preservation through the NFPF's 2021 grant program. Congratulations to all the archives.
https://www.filmpreservation.org/blog/2021/6/17/64-orphan-films-to-be-preserved-through-the-nfpf-s-2021-grants

Two of the films are notable for illuminating the multicultural and transnational aspects of early American cinema. Santa (1932), to be preserved by the Paseo del Norte Foundation, is a melodrama directed by Spanish American silent star Antonio Moreno and produced by Azteca Films, a company based in...

04/22/2021

National Film Preservation FoundationTake a Hike—for the Environment

In honor of Earth Day the NFPF spotlights 'Beach Hike', a conservation film about a 3-day hike, led by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, protesting a proposed coastal highway along the Olympic Peninsula. Preserved and made available by

https://www.filmpreservation.org/blog/2021/4/22/take-a-hike-for-the-environment

In honor of Earth Day we turn the Orphan Film spotlight on Beach Hike (1958), a conservation film about a three-day hike protesting a proposed coastal highway along the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.

04/19/2021

Netflix's Scott Stuber Joins Board of National Film Preservation Foundation (Exclusive)

The NFPF is excited to announce that Scott Stuber, Head of Global Film at Netflix, is joining the NFPF's Board of Directors.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/netflixs-scott-stuber-joins-board-of-national-film-preservation-foundation-exclusive

Netflix's Scott Stuber Joins Board of National Film Preservation Foundation (Exclusive) 11:00 AM PDT 4/19/2021 by Borys Kit FACEBOOK TWITTER EMAIL ME Kevin Winter/Getty Images Stuber joins directors Zooey Deschanel, Martin Scorsese, Alfre Woodard and Larry Karaszewski, among others, in the organizat...

03/25/2021

National Film Preservation Foundation Artist’s Spotlight: Cornelia Chapin

Sculptor Cornelia Chapin's home movies capture her at work creating some of her iconic creations. Watch them courtesy the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution and read more at the NFPF blog.

https://www.filmpreservation.org/blog/2021/3/25/artist-s-spotlight-cornelia-chapin

For Women’s History Month the NFPF is calling attention to the home movies of Cornelia Van Auken Chapin (1893–1972), preserved through an NFPF grant by the Archives of American Art, a unit of the Smithsonian Institution

03/15/2021

Scientific Expedition to the South Pacific Film | AMNH

Check out this fascinating expedition film preserved by the American Museum of Natural History with a 2019 NFPF Preservation Grant. AMNH Special Collections Librarian Greg Raml writes about the expedition and its resident documentarian Toshio Asaeda in the accompanying blog post.

Watch the film and learn more about the Museum's Templeton Crocker Pacific Expedition.

02/25/2021

National Film Preservation FoundationListening to Gordon Parks

Listen to a Stranger: An Interview with Gordon Parks (1973), preserved with an NFPF grant, is currently streaming thanks to Washington University in St. Louis. Read more about the short film here: https://www.filmpreservation.org/blog/2021/2/25/listening-to-gordon-parks

During a month that celebrates the history and accomplishments of African Americans, it’s more than appropriate to highlight Listen to a Stranger: An Interview with Gordon Parks (1973). Preserved through a 2019 NFPF grant by Washington University in St. Louis, this once-rare documentary honors an ...

12/31/2020

National Film Preservation Foundation12 Films to be Preserved through Avant-Garde Masters Grants

Ending 2020 with some good news!

Gunvor Nelson's MY NAME IS OONA is among the dozen films singled out for preservation through eh NFPF and The Film Foundation's Avant-Garde Masters grants, generously funded by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

https://www.filmpreservation.org/blog/2020/12/31/12-films-to-be-preserved-through-avant-garde-masters-grants

The Pacific Film Archive will preserve ten films that were distributed by the Bay Area–based Serious Business Company (SBC), an independent film distribution company founded by Freude (1942–2009), operating from 1972 to 1984. Among them is Gunvor Nelson’s masterpiece My Name is Oona (1969). Na...

09/30/2020

National Film Preservation Foundation47 Orphan Films Saved Through the 2020 NFPF Grants

The NFPF is proud to announce the 47 films being preserved through our 2020 grants program. Congratulations to the grant-winners!

https://www.filmpreservation.org/blog/2020/9/30/47-orphan-films-saved-through-the-2020-nfpf-grants

Two of the grant-winners were once thought lost. Black Chariot (1971), a grassroots-financed feature about the Black liberation struggle, was directed by Robert L. Goodwin—one of the few Black screenwriters working in Hollywood at the time—and stars Bernie Casey. “For nearly fifty years Black ...

01/10/2020

American Neorealism, Part One: 1948-1984 | UCLA Film & Television Archive

Four films preserved by UCLA Film & Television Archive through the NFPF's grant program will be screening as part of its upcoming film series "American Neorealism": Kent MacKenzie's THE EXILES (1961), THE JUNGLE (1967), Charles Burnett's SEVERAL FRIENDS (1969), and Billy Woodberry's BLESS THEIR LITTLE HEARTS (1984).

The profound influence of Italian neorealism on the postwar cinemas of Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia is standard film history. In a nutshell, Roberto Rossellini (Rome, Open City, 1945), Vittorio De Sica (Bicycle Thieves, 1948), Luchino Visconti (La terra trema, 1948) and others transformed....

07/19/2019

National Film Preservation Foundation74 Films to Be Saved Through the 2019 NFPF Preservation Grants!

We're excited to announce the recipients of the NFPF's 2019 grant awards.

Also focusing on social issues and the achievements of people of color are Wataridori: Birds of Passage (1976), a documentary celebration of the Issei, the pioneering first generation of Japanese Americans; Hito Hata: Raise the Banner (1980), a dramatic feature starring Pat Morita, Mako, and Yuki Sh...

04/29/2019

National Film Preservation Foundation“Amazing Tales from the Archives” at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival

The National Film Preservation Foundation is excited to be a co-presenter of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival's Amazing Tales from the Archives on Thursday, May 2nd at the beautiful Castro Theater. Read more on our site:

www.filmpreservation.org/blog/2019/4/22/amazing-tales-from-the-archives-at-the-san-francisco-silent-film-festival

On Thursday, May 2, the National Film Preservation Foundation will co-present “Amazing Tales from the Archives” at the San Francisco Silent Festival. This free lecture program, begun in 2006, features archivists from around the world presenting field reports on new and exciting preservation proj...

10/30/2018

Blog | For Preservation Purposes: Cornelia Chapin's Home Movies | Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Check out this fascinating blog post by Megan McShea, audiovisual archivist at the Archives of American Art, which discusses the importance of film preservation in maintaining the best possible copy of an original film.

Audiovisual archivist Megan McShea presents a case study on Cornelia Chapin's home movies.

10/26/2018

National Film Preservation Foundation: EYE Project

We just added to our website 6 silent fiction and nonfiction shorts preserved through our ongoing project with the EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam: The Backyard, Cupid in Quarantine, From Ore to Finished Product, The Last Word in Chickens, Red Saunders’ Sacrifice, and Uncommon Clay. A big thanks to the musicians and writers who contributed the new scores and essays that accompany the films: Cynthia Chris, Stephen Horne, Riley Humler, Peter Liebhold, Steve Massa, Ben Model, Michael Mortilla, and Scott Simmon .

Through a multi-year collaboration involving the EYE Filmmuseum, NFPF, Library of Congress, Academy Film Archive, Oregon Historical Society, and National Museum of American History, scores of “lost” American silent-era films are being returned to the big screen and shared with new audiences. Tha...

10/11/2018

National Film Preservation Foundation11 Films to be Preserved Through Avant-Garde Masters Grants

Eleven films to be preserved through the NFPF and The Film Foundation, including early works by Stan VanDerBeek, three by Marjorie Keller, and PAPER MOON by Flora Mock:
www.filmpreservation.org/blog/2018/10/11/11-films-to-be-preserved-through-avant-garde-masters-grants

Seven Stan VanDerBeek films from the 1950s and ’60s, a trio of acclaimed experimental visions from Marjorie Keller, and an animated cut-out film from Flora Mock will be preserved through the 2018 Avant-Garde Masters Grants, awarded by The Film Foundation and the National Film Preservation Foundati...

08/14/2018

National Film Preservation Foundation24 Films Join the NFPF's Online Field Guide to Sponsored Films

We've added 24 films to the Online Field Guide to Sponsored Films. Highlights include Joseph Losey's first directorial effort, "Pete-Roleum and His Cousins" (1939), which he made with Charley Bowers!

Today the NFPF adds 24 films to its Online Field Guide to Sponsored Films, a free digital screening room that presents entries from The Field Guide to Sponsored Films, written by Rick Prelinger and published by the NFPF in 2006.

07/18/2018

National Film Preservation FoundationCelebrating the 2018 NFPF Grant Winners—And 20 Years of Grant-giving!

Congratulations to all of the 2018 NFPF film preservation grant recipients!

The National Film Preservation Foundation proudly announces that 35 films have been chosen for preservation through its federally funded grant program. The selection ranges from Street Corner Stories (1977), Warrington Hudlin’s documentary about the vernacular storytelling practices of a New Haven...

04/06/2018

National Film Preservation FoundationNFPF Films at the Orphan Film Symposium

The upcoming Orphan Film Symposium at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens will feature a plethora of unusual and magical films, including a number of celluloid treats preserved thanks to support from the NFPF. It is sure to be an event for the ages.

The 11th Orphan Film Symposium will be held April 11-14 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York. Presented by New York University’s Department of Cinema Studies and its Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program, the event brings together scholars, archivists, curators, media ar...

12/01/2017

National Film Preservation Foundation: EYE Project

We're very excited to premiere six more films from our repatriation project with EYE Filmmuseum, all of them presented with new music and essays. A big round of thanks to our composers (Michael Mortilla, Ben Model, and Stephen Horne) and scholars (J.B. Kaufman, Steve Massa, Jennifer Peterson, Tracy Salcedo, Peter Liebhold, and Helena Wright). Enjoy!

Through a multi-year collaboration involving the EYE Filmmuseum, NFPF, Library of Congress, Academy Film Archive, Oregon Historical Society, and National Museum of American History, scores of “lost” American silent-era films are being returned to the big screen and shared with new audiences. Tha...

10/26/2017

Blackie the Wonder Horse Swims the Golden Gate (1938)

Blackie the Wonder Horse Swims the Golden Gate (1938)

Blackie the Wonder Horse swam the Golden Gate channel to settle a bet between San Francisco businessman Richie "Shorty" Roberts and Bay Meadows operator Bill...

06/16/2017

The Last of the Heath Hens: Special Collections Receives Grant to Preserve 1930s Ornithological Research | Bowdoin News

The Last of the Heath Hens footage to be preserved with NFPF support.

Films documenting ornithological research done in the 1930s by his grandfather, Bowdoin professor of biology Alfred Otto Gross, Kent Island’s first director, will be digitized and preserved, thanks to a grant Bowdoin’s

06/13/2017

57 Films To Be Saved Through the NFPF’s 2017 Preservation Grants

The NFPF has announced the 2017 film preservation grant winners. Thirty-six organizations will receive funding to preserve a plethora of films, including BROKEN BARRIERS (1919), the first motion-picture adaptation of the Sholem Aleichem story that inspired FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, to CODE BLUE (1972), a recruitment film aimed at bringing minorities into the medical field made by Henry Hampton’s Blackside Inc., the Emmy-winning producer of EYES ON THE PRIZE.

The National Film Preservation Foundation is proud to announce the films slated for preservation through its annual federally funded grant program. The grants will allow 36 institutions across 16 states to preserve 57 films from their collections. The selections range from

05/16/2017

Navigating the well-curated, deeply weird Sponsored Films online archive

If you haven't had the chance to visit our new online digital access project focusing on films from THE FIELD GUIDE TO SPONSRED FILMS, The Verge has posted a great introduction to the site.

From animated socialist ants to Frank Sinatra fighting bigotry, it’s a treasure trove of free-to-stream old-school oddities, preserved for the present

05/10/2017

National Film Preservation Foundation Presents The House I Live In (1945)

Now on the NFPF site: Frank Sinatra in a film by Mervyn LeRoy and sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. It was preserved by The Library of Congress and can now be streamed or downloaded for free. It is one of 102 sponsored films added to the NFPF site as part of our new digital access initiative.

05/09/2017

National Film Preservation Foundation: Sponsored Films

The NFPF is pleased to launch a new online component to the landmark FIELD GUIDE TO SPONSORED FILMS by Rick Prelineger. More than 100 films are now available for viewing, most in HD and downloadable: www.filmpreservation.org/sponsored-films

by Rick Prelinger. Made possible by a grant from the Mellon Foundation, this annotated filmography singles out 452 sponsored films of particular historical, cultural, and artistic interest from the more than 300,000 thought to have been made. From animated propaganda in Technicolor to a call for rac...

05/05/2017

FIELD GUIDE TO SPONSORED FILMS | Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

Don't miss our fun and fabulous screening of sponsored films at the Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn this coming Tuesday at 7pm. Highlights include THE HOUSE I LIVE IN, featuring our favorite crooner Frank Sinatra, and SHAKE HANDS WITH DANGER, a Caterpillar Tractor safety film directed by “Herk” Harvey of CARNIVAL OF SOULS fame.

Join the National Film Preservation Foundation to celebrate its newest project—an online Field Guide to Sponsored Films. From…

03/30/2017

Built to persuade and convince, 'Sponsored Films' now entertain

New article about a screening celebrating the NFPF's new sponsored film digital access initiative happening this Saturday, April 1: Field Guide to Sponsored Films | Freep Film Fest

Stay tuned as we get ready to launch this project for the public later this spring.

Freep Film Festival screens "Field Guide to Sponsored Films," which collects rare corporate and institutional movies.

03/29/2017

www.youtube.com

Preserved by the Hoover Institution with a grant from the NFPF, SOVIET RUSSIA THROUGH THE EYES OF AN AMERICAN, a 1935 travelogue by Charles Stuart, shot in Russia and Soviet Georgia. Streaming for public edification.

Soviet Russia through the Eyes of an American from the Charles Stuart collection. Click the following link for more information and a description of the film...

03/21/2017

Experts find what may be the earliest color film of the White House grounds

Wonderful story about films preserved through the NFPF grant program.

President Herbert Hoover’s wife shot color home movies in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

03/17/2017

NFPF FIELD GUIDE trailer

This Monday at the Alamo Drafthouse in San Francisco the NFPF will celebrate sponsored films and announce our new digital access initiative. There are still tickets available if you are in the Bay Area.

This is "NFPF FIELD GUIDE trailer" by Alamo Drafthouse on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

03/08/2017

CFA presents CHICAGO PUBLIC – Chicago Film Archives

If you live in Chicago, don't miss this free screening next Thursday, March 16, of three remarkable films about alternative education that were recently preserved by Chicago Film Archives with support from the NFPF.

Not all students are alike, right? Some might need…well…an alternate approach to learning. Come join us as we premier three newly conserved films about Chicago’s approach to students who just didn’t fit into the cookie-cutter category during the 1960s.