Why the NFPF Was Created

This Is Our City (1950), political ad urging passage of a municipal bond issue, made by a city council member (Oklahoma Historical Society).
This Is Our City (1950), preserved by the Oklahoma Historical Society.

Keystone Aircraft Corporation Collection (1926-34), films of air races, military tests, and promotional flights (National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution).
Keystone Aircraft Corporation Collection (1926-34), preserved by the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution.
 


The National Film Preservation Foundation was created by Congress in 1996 at the recommendation of the Library of Congress.

A two-year study prepared by the Library's National Film Preservation Board documented that American films are disintegrating faster than archives can save them. The types of motion pictures most at-risk are documentaries, silent-era films, avant-garde works, ethnic films, newsreels, home movies, and independent works. These are not Hollywood sound features belonging to the film studios, but "orphans" that fall outside the scope of commercial preservation programs and exist as one-of-a-kind copies in archives, libraries, museums, and historical societies.

Congress asked the Library to find a fresh approach to preserve these endangered materials for future generations. Answering this challenge, experts from the film industry, archives, and scholarly community joined forces, under the guidance of the National Film Preservation Board, to produce Redefining Film Preservation: A National Plan (1994). This plan recommended:

Redefining film preservation to include (1) low-temperature, low-humidity storage to retard film deterioration, (2) the copying of decaying film onto new, more stable filmstock, and (3) use of video and other access technologies to share newly duplicated films with the public.
Increasing the availability of films for education and exhibition.
Developing cooperative projects to advance national preservation goals.
Creating a new federally chartered foundation to help public and nonprofit organizations preserve American orphan films and share them with the public.

The National Film Preservation Foundation Act (PL 104-285, Title II), signed into law on October 11, 1996, charged the NFPF to "encourage, accept, and administer private gifts to promote and ensure the preservation and public accessibility of the nation's film heritage held at the Library of Congress and other public and nonprofit archives throughout the United States."

The NFPF started operations in 1997 as a federally chartered grant-giving public charity (federal tax identification number 52-2055624). We are the nonprofit charitable affiliate of the Library of Congress's National Film Preservation Board. The NFPF's nine-member board of directors is appointed by the Librarian of Congress.