NATIONAL FILM PRESERVATION FOUNDATION AWARDS FEDERALLY FUNDED GRANTS TO 23 ARCHIVES
Contact: Barbara Gibson, 415-392-7291
San Francisco, CA (March 21, 2001)—Newsreel outtakes from the first "National Colored Golf Tournament," organized in 1925 as a venue for African Americans excluded from PGA competition, and a Yiddish-language music short are among the projects that will be preserved through the federally funded grants announced today by the nonprofit National Film Preservation Foundation. These cash awards to 23 film archives across the country help save American "orphan" films, those independent works not preserved by commercial interests.
Other cultural and historically significant films slated for preservation include D.W. Griffith's Fighting Blood, color footage of the Baseball Hall of Fame's opening festivities, short narratives by Charles Burnett, and avant-garde works by Jordan Belson, Jules Engel, David Lamelas, and Harry Smith.
"America's filmmaking heritage is as diverse as America itself," said grant panelist Margaret Bodde, Director, The Film Foundation, "These federal grants are making it possible to save an important part of our history before it disappears."
This is the fourth year that the NFPF has distributed preservation grants. The federal cash awards enable archives to make preservation and public viewing copies of films that would not survive without public support. Since 1997, the NFPF has supported preservation projects in 25 states and the District of Columbia and helped preserve 350 films and collections. More grant opportunities will be announced later this spring.
Several films preserved with NFPF support can be seen in the NFPF's Treasures from American Film Archives DVD set. Released this past fall, the four-DVD set has been honored with awards from the National Society of Film Critics and the Video Software Dealers Association.
The 2001 grant recipients are:
- Anthology Film Archives (New York)
- Documentary Educational Resources (Massachusetts)
- George Eastman House (New York)
- Harry Smith Archives (New York)
- iota Center (California)
- Iowa State University (Iowa)
- Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.)
- Louis Wolfson II Media History Center (Florida)
- National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum (New York)
- National Center for Jewish Film (Massachusetts)
- North Carolina State Archives (North Carolina)
- Pacific Film Archive (California)
- Paso Robles Pioneer Museum (California)
- Pennsylvania State Archives (Pennsylvania)
- San Diego Historical Society (California)
- State Agricultural Heritage Museum, South Dakota State University (South Dakota)
- Swarthmore College (Pennsylvania)
- UCLA Film and Television Archive (California)
- University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Nebraska)
- University of South Carolina (South Carolina)
- University of Southern California (California)
- University of Texas at Austin (Texas)
- Whitney Museum of American Art (New York)
The National Film Preservation Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to saving America's film heritage. Created by the U.S. Congress in 1996, the NFPF is the charitable affiliate of the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress. For more information on NFPF programs and a complete list of the awards, please visit the NFPF web site: www.filmpreservation.org.
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