NFPF News

Daughter of Dawn on Blu-Ray

Daughter of Dawn (1920)

Films preserved through NFPF funding are always made available for public access, whether onsite or online, but some archives go further by partnering with a distributor to make a film available for film lovers to add to their collection. Such is the case with Daughter of Dawn (1920), to be released on Blu-Ray on July 19.

Named to the National Film Registry in 2013, this silent feature was preserved by the Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS), whose description is worth quoting:

“The story, played by an all-Indian cast of 300 Kiowas and Comanches, includes a four-way love story, two buffalo hunt scenes, a battle scene, village scenes, dances, deceit, courage, hand to hand combat, love scenes, and a happy ending. The Indians, who had been on the reservation less than fifty years, brought with them their own tipis, horses, clothing, and material culture. The lead actor is White Parker, … Read more

Preservation Projects: The L.A. Rebellion

Diary of an African Nun (1977), directed by Julie Dash.

Film preservation not only safeguards individual films, but can also preserve a film movement. An exciting example is UCLA Film & Television Archive’s preservation of films from the L.A. Rebellion.

Following the Watts Uprising of 1965 and ensuing racial tensions, UCLA met the demands of its students by instituting an Ethno-Communications initiative, which responded to the needs of communities of color and facilitated non-commercial filmmaking by artists such as Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, Larry Clark, Haile Gerima, and Billy Woodberry.

Their shared goal was to create authentic narratives about the black experience that avoided the stereotypes of Hollywood or the Blaxploitation genre. The films were influenced by study of “third world” cinema from Latin America and Africa, the French nouvelle vague, and postwar neorealist cinema. The … Read more

Orphan Film Spotlight: Adaptive Behavior of Golden-Mantled Ground Squirrels

Working for peanuts in Adaptive Behavior of Golden-Mantled Ground Squirrels (1942).

Preserved by the University of Oregon, Adaptive Behavior of Golden-Mantled Ground Squirrels (1942) depicts members of the titular species (not to be confused with chipmunks) roaming around Crater Lake, Oregon, before moving indoors to show captive squirrels learning how to solve a series of increasingly challenging tasks. Tantalized by out-of-reach peanuts, the determined critters literally pull strings for food.

The man behind the squirrels was University of Oregon psychology professor and educational filmmaker Lester F. Beck (1909-77), whose love of animals stemmed from growing up on an Oregon ranch; he would later build a house that allowed wild rodents to crawl into a maze suspended from the living room ceiling. Beck called film “one of the greatest aids to learning since … Read more

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival Returns

Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema, from EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam.

This week is graced by the 26th annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the largest event in America dedicated to that long-vanished but much-beloved art form. On Friday the NFPF will join the festival in presenting “Amazing Tales from the Archives,” wherein archivists from various countries present field reports on new and exciting preservation projects.

This year there are three presentations: Georges Mourier from the Cinémathèque Française will give news on the archive’s six-and-a-half-hour restoration of Abel Gance’s Napoleon. From Universal Pictures, Peter Schade and Emily Wensel will report on the studio’s new silent film preservation project, which has made possible the festival screening of The Last Warning, a murder mystery from 1929. Bryony Dixon, senior curator of silent film for the British Film … Read more

64 Films To Be Saved Through the NFPF’s 2016 Preservation Grants

James Blue on the set of The Olive Trees of Justice (1989).

From The Streets of Greenwood (1963), a documentary about civil rights activists registering African American voters in Mississippi, to James Blue’s The Olive Trees of Justice (1962), a dramatic feature set during the Algerian war for independence, the NFPF is excited to announce the most recent group of films slated for preservation through its federally funded grant program. A grand total of 64 films will be preserved by 39 institutions across 24 states.

Scored by Maurice Jarre and based on a celebrated novel by Jean Pélégri (available in an English translation by Anthony Burgess), The Olive Trees of Justice (1962) was shot entirely in Algeria with nonprofessional actors; it tells the story of a Frenchman born and raised in Algeria, whose loyalties are torn between the two countries that shaped his identity. … Read more