THE AMERICAN SILENT FICTION FILM PROJECT

A Save America's Treasures Project Organized by the National Film Preservation Foundation

America's first filmmakers pioneered the art of telling stories with moving pictures. They created a new form of mass entertainment that laid the foundation for the modern film industry. D.W. Griffith, Ernst Lubitsch, Erich von Stroheim, Cecil B. DeMille, Douglas Fairbanks, Clara Bow, and John Barrymore—the works by these early creators spread American culture around the globe and continue to shape the art of filmmaking.

It is surprising, given the international popularity of American silent films that so few survive today. Fewer than 20% of our silent-era fiction features survive in complete copies in U.S. archives. The losses are even higher for the teens. Surviving titles often exist in unique copies in highly flammable nitrate or deteriorating diacetate film. These are too fragile to be screened for contemporary audiences.

Given the magnitude of the problem, the four archives joined forces with the NFPF to work toward a cooperative solution. In 1999 we received a $1 million federal grant to preserve endangered silent-era shorts, serials, and features at the George Eastman House, the Museum of Modern Art, and the UCLA Film & Television Archive. This represents the largest single U.S. government film preservation grant ever awarded.

"The award to the National Film Preservation Foundation will make sure our children and our grandchildren will know what early filmmaking looked like and appreciate . . . silent films as the precursors to the latest Star Wars prequel." Hillary Rodham Clinton, Honorary Chair Millennium Committee to Save America's Treasures May 19, 1999

Completed in December 2002, the project has produced new 35mm preservation masters and prints of 94 films from the teens and twenties. Most of these titles have not been seen in complete, good-quality prints in decades. The Pordenone Silent Film Festival screened selections from the project in 2001 and 2002. The exhibition prints will continue to be enjoyed for decades to come.

Saving the Silents also funded the expansion of the International Federation of Film Archives' authoritative database of surviving silent-era film titles. The database is the road map for finding best source material for silent film preservation projects. The update was managed by the Pacific Film Archive at UC Berkeley and published on CD-ROM. Archives in 45 countries contributed data. The NFPF distributed free copies of the 2001 and 2002 editions to all 50 state libraries.

Saving the Silents was made possible through a matching grant from the Department of Interior's Save America's Treasures fund and administered by the National Endowment for the Arts. The program protects historic sites and collections that epitomize the creativity of the American people.