NATIONAL FILM PRESERVATION FOUNDATION AWARDS
FILM PRESERVATION GRANTS TO 29 ARCHIVES

Contact: Jeff Lambert (415-392-7291, lambert@filmpreservation.org)

San Francisco, CA (May 11, 2004)—Joan Crawford's home movies, World War II footage taken by Johns Hopkins medical units stationed in the Pacific, and Tony Conrad's avant-garde classic The Flicker are among the 63 films to be saved through grants announced today by the National Film Preservation Foundation. The awards will enable 29 libraries, museums, and archives to save American "orphan" films that are not unlikely to survive without public support.

Other historically and culturally significant works slated for preservation include 1941 footage of the North Carolina Asylum for the Colored Insane; a portrait of the first native born governor of Puerto Rico; motion pictures capturing Navajo Reservation life, made in the 1930s and 1940s by a woman who ran a trading post; a Methodist temperance film, documentation of sculptor Malvina Hoffman; a 1957 industrial film on the production of matzo; and avant-garde works by Gregory Markopolous, Allen Ross, George Kuchar, and James Whitney.

Many of the motion pictures that will be preserved through these grants have been unseen in decades. "Joan Crawford's home movies," said Paolo Cherchi Usai, Senior Curator of the George Eastman House, "provide unique insight into the private life of a great actress. The films are far too brittle for projection. Once duplicated onto modern film stock, they are sure to become essential viewing for Hollywood historians and documentarians."

The grant recipients are:

• Anthology Film Archives (New York)
• Center for Visual Music (California)
• Chicago Filmmakers (Illinois)
• Cherry Foundation (North Carolina)
• Clemson University (South Carolina)
• Duke University (North Carolina)
• East Tennessee State University (Tennessee)
• Emory University (Georgia)
• Field Museum (Illinois)
• Florida Moving Image Archive (Florida)
• General Archive of Puerto Rico (Puerto Rico)
• General Commission on Archives and History, United Methodist Church (New Jersey)
• George Eastman House (New York)
• Hennessey 2010 Association (Oklahoma)
• Japanese American National Museum (California)
• Johns Hopkins University (Maryland)
• Mariners' Museum (Virginia)
• Mayo Clinic (Minnesota)
• National Center for Jewish Film (Massachusetts)
• New Mexico State Records Center and Archives (New Mexico)
• New York Public Library (New York)
• North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System (New York)
• Office of the Historian, Town of Pelham (New York)
• Pacific Film Archive (California)
• Temenos (New York)
• UCLA Film and Television Archive (California)
• University of Missouri-Columbia (Missouri)
• University of Texas at Austin (Texas)
• Walker Art Center (Minnesota)

The National Film Preservation Foundation is the nonprofit organization created by the U.S. Congress in 1996 to help save America's film heritage. The NFPF is the charitable affiliate of the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress. For a full list of funded projects, please visit the NFPF Web site: www.filmpreservation.org.

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