NFPF Preserved Film Screenings
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The title card of Lyman H. Howe’s Famous Ride on a Runaway Train (1921).
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The NFPF blog awakens from its winter hibernation to bring you news of two NFPF-related screenings. This Wednesday, February 24, Executive Director Jeff Lambert will present “NFPF Preservation Highlights,” consisting of films saved through our grant programs (or appearing on our Treasures DVDs) at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California. Jeff will provide an overview of the NFPF’s activities and will introduce eight movies representing the wide range of our projects, with highlights such as Notes on the Port of St. Francis (1951), Frank Stauffacher’s poetic portrait of San Francisco, narrated by Vincent Price, and Lyman H. Howe’s Famous Ride on a Runaway Train (1921), a thrill-packed novelty short filmed from the train that inspired America’s first roller coasters. The film, accompanied with its vintage sound-effects disc, is available for purchase on our Treasures New Zealand DVD.
Those of you on the East Coast can also attend a screening of an NFPF preserved film. Break and Enter (Rompiendo Puertas) (1970), is a documentary about gentrification on New York’s Upper West Side, which pushed the primarily Latino community out of their homes and led to “Operation Move-In,” a mostly women-led movement to take back the empty buildings. The film will screen at New York University on February 27 as part of the symposium “Organizing/ Filmmaking/ Archiving: Films from the Third World Newsreel Archives.” TWN produced Break and Enter, and two of the filmmakers will take part in a panel discussion.