NFPF News

Go “Below the Surface” at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival!

Below the Surface (1920).

After a two-year break the San Francisco Silent Film Festival roars back to life on May 5th. This 25th anniversary edition lasts until May 11 and is jam-packed with films. Among these treasures is Below the Surface (1920), preserved by the Festival through the support of the National Film Preservation Foundation. The premiere of the restoration occurs on Friday, May 6, at 2pm, and we hope you can make it.

Below the Surface was the follow-up to the notorious revenge melodrama Behind the Door (1919). It reunites producer Thomas Ince, director Irvin Willat, star Hobart Bosworth, and cinematographer J.O. Taylor (later to film King Kong). Both films have action aboard submarines and a macabre shipboard denouement. In Below the Surface Bosworth plays a diver in small-town Maine who’s assisted by his loyal son (Lloyd Hughes). Their relationship is … Read more

"Soft Shoes" at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival

Starting May 30th the San Francisco Silent Film Festival will celebrate its 20th anniversary with five days of programs showcasing silent classics from around the world. The NFPF is honored to have played a part in the celebration by supporting the preservation of Soft Shoes (1925), which screens May 31 with live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin.

"Harry Carey is willing to risk an eye as Lillian Rich adjusts her stocking" in Soft Shoes (1925). Photo and text from Exhibitor’s Trade Review, March 14, 1925.

Directed by Lloyd Ingraham and photographed by Sol Polito, Soft Shoes was part of a series of Westerns produced by Hunt Stromberg and starring Harry Carey. Set in 1925, the semi-comedic story involves small-town western sheriff Pat Halahan (Carey) visiting San Francisco and apprehending the alluring burglar Faith O’Day (Lillian Rich), who had attempted to rob his hotel room. … Read more

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 Films at the UCLA Festival of Preservation

Production still from The Way of Peace: photographer, puppet designer, and producer Wah Ming Chang at work on a miniature, with art-director/producer Blanding Sloan.

This week marks the return of UCLA Film & Television Archive’s biennial Festival of Preservation. Playing all through March, the Festival showcases UCLA’s recent achievements in safeguarding and making available its many film treasures, five of which were preserved through recent NFPF grants.

The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971), Howard Alk and Mike Gray's documentary on the violent death of the leader of the Illinois Black Panther Party, will be preceded by The Jungle (1967), a vivid portrayal of Philadelphia street life starring and made by African American gang members. In 2009 it was named to the National Film Registry.

Also on the Registry is The Way of Peace (1947), an animated plea for pacifism written and directed … Read more

The NFPF Presents “Saving Orphan Films”

Faces & Fortunes (1959), one of seven NFPF grant films screening at the Wexner Center for the Arts.

On Saturday, February 25, a screening of films preserved through the NFPF will take place at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. Titled “Saving ‘Orphan’ Films,” it’s one of several programs scheduled for the Center’s “Cinema Revival: A Festival of Film Restoration.”

The screening will be introduced by NFPF Executive Director Jeff Lambert, who in a recent interview by the Wexner Center’s blog discusses the mission of the NFPF and its work. He also touches upon the films that will be screened in 35mm and 16mm, whose variety demonstrates the wide range of films preserved by our grant programs. The titles are:

• Fifty Million Years Ago (1925), an introduction to the theory of evolution told through stop-motion animation. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.

• Faces & Fortunes … Read more