NATIONAL FILM PRESERVATION FOUNDATION AWARDS GRANTS TO 26 ARCHIVES
Contact: Barbara Gibson (415-392-7291, barbara@webbnet.com)
San Francisco, CA (September 24, 2002)—A 1973 documentary on the construction of the World Trade Center and a 1921 racing film by America's first motorcycle manufacturer are among the 58 films that will be preserved through grants announced today by the National Film Preservation Foundation. These awards will help 26 archives across the country save American "orphan" films that are not preserved by commercial interests.
Other culturally significant films slated for preservation include: a film clandestinely shot by an American in 1920s Soviet Russia to document conditions in his home village; six North Carolina town "portraits" by itinerant filmmaker H. Lee Waters; a backstage view of opera baritone Richard Bonelli; home movies made by dance luminary Katherine Dunham in Haiti (1936); student performances by Ben Vereen; The Call of Her People (1917), starring Ethel Barrymore; The Blot (1921) by crusading silent film director Lois Weber; and avant-garde works by Jules Engel, Taylor Mead, Pat O'Neil, and Ron Rice.
"Because of the NFPF's grants, new organizations across the country are joining the movement to save America's moving image heritage. Through these efforts films that might have languished unseen and forgotten can now enrich the lives of all Americans," said Pamela Wintle of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, who represented the National Film Preservation Board on the summer grant panel.
Seventeen of the awards are funded through The National Film Preservation Foundation Act of 1996 and secured through appropriations from the Library of Congress. The remaining grants distribute preservation services contributed by 14 public-spirited laboratories and postproduction houses. Since starting operations in 1997, the NFPF has advanced film preservation in 30 states and the District of Columbia and helped save more than 500 films and collections.
The grant recipients are:
- Alaska Moving Image Preservation Association (Alaska)
- American Historical Society of Germans from Russia (Nebraska)
- Anthology Film Archives (New York)
- Coe College (Iowa)
- Donnell Media Center, New York Public Library (New York)
- Duke University (North Carolina)
- Florida Moving Image Archive (Florida)
- George Eastman House (New York)
- The iotaCenter (California)
- Dance Division, New York Public Library (New York)
- Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.)
- Maine Historical Society (Maine)
- Mississippi Department of Archives and History (Mississippi)
- Motorcycle Hall of Fame and Museum (Ohio)
- Nebraska State Historical Society (Nebraska)
- New Mexico State Records Center and Archives (New Mexico)
- Northeast Historic Film (Maine)
- San Francisco Media Archive (California)
- San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum (California)
- Chicago Province Archives, Society of the Divine Word (Illinois)
- Southern Illinois University (Illinois)
- Stanford University (California)
- Tudor Place (Washington, D.C.)
- University of Iowa (Iowa)
- University of Minnesota (Minnesota)
- Visual Communications (California)
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.
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