Classic Hollywood features are only the most visible part of our motion picture heritage. Over the last century American filmmakers—professional and amateur alike—have also created documentaries, "silent" movies, newsreels, ethnic films, avant-garde works, home movies, animation, anthropological footage, industrial films, and other independent works.

These are not Hollywood sound films belonging to the major motion picture studios, but "orphans" that fall outside the scope of commercial preservation programs. Orphan films often exist as one-of-a-kind copies. Because they document subjects and view points not shown in the mainstream media of their period, the works can take on special historical and cultural value today. Whatever their content, genre, or date, orphan films share one key thing: They survive today thanks to the efforts of film archives.

Hundreds of film archives in American museums, universities, historical societies, and libraries have taken responsibility for caring for "orphaned" moving images that document our culture and history. Film preservation is expensive. These film archives need support to copy, store, and share their materials with the public.

For many orphan films, particularly fragments and unpublished works, it is often virtually impossible to confirm with 100% certainty that the works lack rights holders who have the legal right to control the films' exhibition and reuse in new works. (Copyright law distinguishes between the ownership of the copyright and the ownership of the physical material in which the work is embodied. Thus the archive owning a film may not have the right to exploit it. For more on copyright, see The Film Preservation Guide, Chapter 8 under "Preservation Basics" on this Web site.)

This uncertainty can discourage archives from showing orphan films and releasing them on DVD. Recently in Federal Register (January 26, 2005, vol. 70, no. 16), the U.S. Copyright Office of the Library of Congress invited public comment on the issues raised by such materials. To read the NFPF submission, click here.