NFPF Treasures To Save and Project
 |
|
A pre-preservation film strip from Elijah Pierce: Woodcarver (1974). The newly preserved print that will screen has been color-corrected to restore its original vibrancy.
|
Attention New Yorkers! Twelve films preserved through NFPF grants will be playing at “To Save and Project,” the Museum of Modern Art’s annual festival of newly restored films from archives worldwide, held January 9-30.
Eight of the films mae up a program devoted to Chicago-based experimental filmmaker Heather McAdams, whose works, dating from 1980 to 1995, are primarily assembled from found footage and view the detritus of American culture through an antic feminist lens. The films were preserved by the Chicago Film Society through a 2021 NFPF Federal Grant and a 2022 Avant-Garde Masters Grant (awarded in conjunction with The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation).
Two other titles were saved through federal grants awarded to west coast archives. After the Earthquake/Después del Terremoto (1979), preserved by the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, is a fiction short detailing the experiences of Nicaraguan refugees in San Francisco, made by Lourdes Portillo and Nina Serrano. The White Heather (1919), preserved by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, is a melodrama directed by the silent-era pioneer Maurice Tourneur, and climaxes in an underwater fight filmed through the Williamson Submarine tube.
Lastly, two titles are freshly completed 2024 federal grant projects. Pittsburgh Sound + Image preserved We Are Universal (1971), created by activist and Blackside Inc. alumnus Billy Jackson. Inspired by the “Black is Beautiful” movement, the short documentary features interviews with notable Black artists and leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Quincy Jones. Elijah Pierce: Woodcarver (1974), preserved by Ohio State University, is a short profile of Elijah Pierce, son of a former slave and a self-taught folk artist who received a National Heritage Fellowship. Based in Columbus, Ohio he owned and operated a barbershop that also housed the art studio where he created intricate narrative wood carvings such “Slavery Time” and “Elijah Escapes the Mob,” both featured in the film, which will also screen on February 20 at Ohio University’s Wexner Center for the Arts.