ACADEMY PLEDGES ADDITIONAL $250,000 TO PRESERVATION FOUNDATION
Press release courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Contact: John Pavlik (310) 247-3000
BEVERLY HILLS, CA (August 30, 2000)—The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has made a second pledge of $250,000 to the National Film Preservation Foundation to help the nation's film archives preserve "orphan films," bringing the total Academy gift to half a million dollars.
The Academy first pledged $250,000 to the NFPF in October, 1997, to help launch the then-fledgling organization. That pledge was paid off this year and the Academy's Board of Governors ok'd the additional donation, to be paid at $50,000 a year.
"This remains the largest single grant the Academy has ever given to a single outside group," Academy President Robert Rehme said.
The NFPF was created by Congress in 1996 to raise private funds to support the nation's film preservation activities. It is the charitable affiliate of the National Film Preservation Board, which annually adds to the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress titles which constitute a national roster of films that have contributed significantly to American culture and whose preservation must be assured.
"Orphan films" are films such as newsreels, independent films, documentaries and avant-garde, ethnic and public domain material which have no studio or other entity with an economic motive to save them.
"We hope our lead will make it more likely that the industry's major companies will line up behind us," Rehme said at the time of the first contribution.
"What you hoped would happen, has happened," NFPF Chair Roger Mayer told the Academy's governors earlier this month. "The Academy broke the ice. From a standing start, because of the Academy contribution, we have become the premiere promoter of national film preservation."
The Academy Film Archive, in its own right one of the nation's leading archives, continues to receive its funding directly from the Academy.
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