NFPF News

24 Films Join the NFPF's Online Field Guide to Sponsored Films

Once Upon a Time (1934)

Today the NFPF adds 24 films to its Online Field Guide to Sponsored Films, a free digital screening room that presents entries from The Field Guide to Sponsored Films, written by Rick Prelinger and published by the NFPF in 2006.

These additions bring the total amount of titles to 159. All of the films were commissioned by a host of American businesses, charities, advocacy groups, and governments, and intended to promote commercial products, highlight good works, bring attention to social causes, and explain government programs.

Among the highlights are two drivers’ safety films: Last Date (1950) introduced the word “teenicide” into the English language, while the cartoon Once Upon a Time (1934) features the good fairies “Carefulness” and “Courtesy” preventing car crashes.

Another pair of films praise public libraries: Portrait of a Library (1940) profiles … Read more

Celebrating the 2018 NFPF Grant Winners—And 20 Years of Grant-giving!

The National Film Preservation Foundation proudly announces that 35 films have been chosen for preservation through its federally funded grant program. The selection ranges from Street Corner Stories (1977), Warrington Hudlin’s documentary about the vernacular storytelling practices of a New Haven corner store’s African American customers, to Inquiring Nuns (1968), Gordon Quinn’s cinema-verité documentary in which a pair of nuns asks Chicagoans on the street if they are happy with their lives.

Won by a Sweet (1929), to be preserved by Washington University with support from the NFPF.

The grants will be administered to 24 institutions spread across 16 states. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the NFPF’s annual grant program: Since 1998 the NFPF has provided preservation resources to 296 organizations in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico … 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

EYE International Film Conference Presentation

Flaming Canyons (1929)

Held annually at EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, the EYE Film Conference attracts archivists, curators, and film scholar and preservationists from around the world. This year’s conference will be held from May 27—29 and themed Activating the Archive: Audio-Visual Collections and Civic Engagement, Political Dissent and Societal Change.

The NFPF will take part on Monday, May 28 with the presentation “National Parks, Nitrate Film, and America's Memory of the Commons.” The National Park Service was created by Congress in 1916, and today more than 400 National Parks enrich the nation. Early cinematic depictions of the parks show us how these lands and their natural beauty have served citizens and visitors since their opening, and take us back to the now-distant years of their first public use.

The National Film Preservation Foundation—in collaboration with the EYE … Read more

NFPF Films at the Orphan Film Symposium

Cullen Landis and Elinor Field as lovebirds at the mercy of the law in Cupid in Quarantine (1918).

The 11th Orphan Film Symposium will be held April 11-14 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York. Presented by New York University’s Department of Cinema Studies and its Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program, the event brings together scholars, archivists, curators, media artists, preservationists, and collectors. Orphan works will be screened and presented, including four films preserved through NFPF funding.

Laserimage (1972), Ivan Dryer’s celluloid forerunner to his Laserium light show, was preserved by New York University.

Blackie the Wonder Horse Swims the Golden Gate (1938), a newsreel story covering the Wonder Horse’s legendary transbay swim from Marin to San Francisco, was preserved by the San Francisco Media Archive and is part of “A Screening in Tribute to Stephen … Read more