NFPF News

View 6 More “Lost” Films at the NFPF Website

The stencil-colored splendor of Flaming Canyons (1929).

Six more films, from the NFPF’s ongoing partnership with EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, are now available for online viewing in our screening room. These freshly preserved American silent films, unseen since their original release more than 90 years ago, are accompanied by new music from composers Michael Mortilla, Ben Model, and Stephen Horne, and by program notes from scholars and silent film experts. The NFPF-led project enabled three film archives to supervise the preservation of this set of sponsored films, travelogues, and comedies. The preservation and web presentation of the nonfiction films was made possible through a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, not only handled the preservation of two industrial films, but also provided … Read more

33 More Films Added to NFPF’s Online Field Guide to Sponsored Films

1999 A.D. (1967)

Today the National Film Preservation Foundation adds 33 more films to its digital access project the Online Field Guide to Sponsored Films, a screening room that presents films from the 2006 book The Field Guide to Sponsored Films, written by Rick Prelinger and published by the NFPF with the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The screening room gathers 135 sponsored films, all commissioned during the past century by a host of American organizations: businesses promoting commercial products, charities highlighting their good works, advocacy groups bringing attention to social causes, and state and local governments explaining their programs.

The 33 new films in the screening room range across two thirds of the 20th century: Hotel Del Monte, sponsored by Southern Pacific Railroad to promote a resort in Monterey, California, is from … 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

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

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 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.

Broken Barriers (1919).

Also known as Khavah (the title of Aleichem’s story), Broken Barriers was thought lost for decades, until a print was donated to The National Center for Jewish Film by the granddaughter of the producer. “It’s a gem of a discovery and one that greatly contributes to the continuum … Read more

Now Online: 102 Films from the NFPF’s Field Guide to Sponsored Films

Frank Sinatra sings for religious tolerance in The House I Live In (1945).

Today the National Film Preservation Foundation launches an ambitious digital access project: an online screening room featuring more than 100 films from The Field Guide to Sponsored Films. Written by Rick Prelinger and published by the NFPF in 2006 through the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Field Guide was the first overview of the motion pictures commissioned during the past century by American businesses, charities, advocacy groups, and state and local government organizations. The annotated filmography singled out 452 sponsored films of particular historical, cultural, and artistic interest; now viewers can see 102 of them online. Almost all are in HD and available for free download, thanks to our partners at the Library of Congress and the Internet Archive.

Since … Read more