NFPF News

The NFPF at the Reel Thing, plus Grants in the News

Professor E.B. Paine rings bells in Joseph T. Tykociner’s Sound Experiments (1922). Note the wide experimental sound band to the right.

The 41st edition of the Reel Thing Technical Symposium will be held in Los Angeles from August 24-26. Organized by Michael Friend and NFPF Board Chair Grover Crisp, the Reel Thing comprises a set of presentations on technological advances in film preservation and addresses “current thinking and most advanced practical examples of progress in the field of preservation, restoration and media conservation.”

The NFPF features in two events at this year's edition. On Friday there will be a panel on "Recovering Early Optical Sound: Joseph Tykociner’s 1922 Composite Sound-on-Film System." This footage of early sound-on-film demonstrations was produced in 1922 by the first Research Professor of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana— … Read more

NFPF in the News: Herbert Hoover Home Movies Preserved in Iowa

President Herbert Hoover playing Hooverball, from Hoover Kodacolor Home Movies (1928–30).

In 2015 the NFPF awarded a grant to Iowa's Herbert Hoover Library-Presidential Museum to preserve a collection of 16mm home movies taken primarily by President Hoover’s wife, son, and daughter-in-law. Depicting family travels and various White House activities during the time of Hoover’s administration, the footage was shot in Kodacolor, a complicated early color process that required a special projector to show the films, which otherwise registered as black and white.

An NFPF grant allowed for the Hoover Library to send the films to Video & Film Solutions, which scanned and digitally decoded the films to restore their original color before preserving them on regular color filmstock, so they are now viewable in their original form. Acclaimed as perhaps the earliest color images of the White … Read more

Now Online: Treasures From American Film Archives

William S. Hart in Hell’s Hinges (1916), one of nearly four dozen films from Treasures from American Film Archives that are now online.

Today the NFPF makes freely available for online viewing 47 films from its first DVD set, Treasures from American Film Archives. Originally released in 2000 and hailed by Roger Ebert as “a treasure trove of old, obscure, forgotten, rediscovered, and fascinating footage from the first century of film,” Treasures marked the first time that America’s archives had joined forces to share their films with home video audiences and showcase the amazing range of American films. It received an award from the National Society of Film Critics and was called the “best set of the year” by The New York Times. Treasures eventually sold out, as did an Encore edition made possible through the support of the Cecil B. De Mille Foundation. We are committed to keeping the … Read more

Celebrate Thanksgiving "For Liberty and Union"

For Liberty and Union (1977)

Now available for public viewing on the NFPF website, For Liberty and Union is an example of sponsored filmmaking in the service of history. It is a dramatization of the 1861 convention that led to West Virginia breaking away from Confederate Virginia during the Civil War and becoming a new state. The film was sponsored by the West Virginia Independence Hall Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to saving and restoring the Wheeling Custom House, where Unionist delegates held their fateful convention. Produced by Larry Keating Productions and local filmmaker Ellis Dungan in 1977, For Liberty and Union was also filmed within the Custom House, whose restoration was nearing completion. Opened as a museum and rechristened the West Virginia Independence Hall, the building today screens the film for visitors. This online presentation is made … Read more

NFPF Screening at the Exploratorium

Butterfly (1967) by Shirley Clarke and her daughter Wendy (pictured above).

On Thursday, October 20, the Exploratorium in San Francisco presents “Seasons of Unrest: Activist Filmmaking in the Vietnam Era,” an evening of films that explore the divided and fractious state of the union during the late 1960s and onward. All six films were preserved through National Film Preservation Foundation grants by archives across the country and will be presented via sparkling new 16mm prints. Despite the passage of four decades, these works remain compellingly relevant. The roster includes:

• The Jungle (1967), a vivid portrayal of Philadelphia street life starring and made by African American gang members, named to the National Film Registry in 2009. Preserved by UCLA Film & Television Archive.
• Young Braves (1968), a student-produced ethnographic study and a celebration of a group of Puerto Rican teens in … Read more