NFPF News

Four NFPF-Preserved Films Unspooling at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival

Norma Shearer going mad in Man and Wife (1923), preserved by UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Next week the 26th installment of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival opens in San Francisco’s Castro Theatre. Four of the films have been preserved through grants administered by the National Film Preservation Foundation.

On Thursday, July 13, Doll Messengers of Friendship (1929) will screen during the free “Amazing Tales from the Archives” program. This short film commemorates a doll exchange between the U.S. and Japan that was initiated by the Committee on World Friendship Among Children. 58 dolls commissioned by the Japanese government from master doll makers toured the U.S. and were acclaimed as works of art. Doll Messengers of Friendship was screened at the local doll exchange ceremonies that comprised the tour. The surviving 9-minute … Read more

"The Oath of the Sword" Screens at the Academy Museum

On Sunday, May 28 the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will screen The Oath of the Sword (1914), a three-reel silent drama preserved with National Film Preservation Foundation support. Made by the Japanese Film Company and featuring an all-Japanese leading cast, The Oath of the Sword is the earliest known Asian American film production. It is an important and rare surviving exemplar of an under-explored part of early Asian American film history: movies made by and for Japanese Americans.

The Oath of the Sword (1914) preserved by the Japanese American National Museum and George Eastman Museum with NFPF support.

The Oath of the Sword tells the tragic story of lovers separated when an ambitious young man leaves his beloved in Japan to study abroad at the University of California, Berkeley. It contrasts the morals of traditional Japanese society with the forces of … Read more

Register for a 2023 NFPF Grant by March 24th

Friday, March 24th is the registration deadline for the National Film Preservation Foundation’s federally funded grant program, made possible by the Library of Congress Sound Recording and Film Preservation Programs Reauthorization Act of 2016.

The NFPF offers two types of federal cash grants that support the preservation of historically and culturally significant American films. Completed applications will be due Friday, April 28th.

Basic Preservation Grants fund laboratory work to create preservation masters and access copies, and are open to nonprofit and public institutions in the United States that provide public access to their film collections. The awards range from $1,000 to $20,000.

Matching Grants help experienced institutions undertake larger-scale projects. Applicants may request cash stipends of between $20,001 and $75,000 to fund laboratory work. They must “match” the NFPF … Read more

Seven Films to be Preserved Through Avant-Garde Masters Grants

Plumb Line (1971) by Carolee Schneemann.

A portrait of a drag artist by Heather McAdams, a structural film by Lawrence Gottheim, two evocations of city/ landscapes by Allen Downs, and three works by Carolee Schneemann will be preserved and made available through the 2022 Avant-Garde Masters Grants, awarded by The Film Foundation and the National Film Preservation Foundation.

Chicago-based alternative cartoonist Heather McAdams assembled her films from found footage, viewing pop culture’s scraps through an anarchic feminist lens. While teaching in Lexington, Kentucky, McAdams befriended Bradley Harrison Picklesimer, owner of a drag bar/nightclub on Main Street. Assembled “like a crazy quilt,” to quote McAdams, Meet…Bradley Harrison Picklesimer (1988) scrambles found and direct footage to cover its … Read more

60 Films to be Saved by the NFPF’s 2022 Grants

The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy (1980) will be preserved by the Yale Film Archive with NFPF support.

The National Film Preservation Foundation is proud to announce the winners of its 2022 federally funded grants. 28 institutions will use the awards to preserve 60 films, including the 1921 mystery-western Trailin’, starring Tom Mix, the first true cowboy movie star; lecture reels of Dian Fossey’s groundbreaking mountain gorilla research; and the short comedic feature The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy (1980), one of two films completed filmmaker/professor Kathleen Collins before her premature death from cancer.

“Losing Ground (1982), the second and final film by Kathleen Collins, was added to the National Film Registry in 2020,” notes Allyson Nadia Field, Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago, and a member of the … Read more