"SAVING THE SILENTS" HONORED AT 2002 PORDENONE FILM FESTIVAL
Contact: Jeff Lambert (415-392-7291, lambert@filmpreservation.org)
San Francisco, CA (October 2, 2002)—For the second year in a row, the internationally renowned Pordenone Silent Film Festival will present a tribute to the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Film Preservation Foundation in Sacile, Italy. Pordenone's three-program series, scheduled during the 21st annual festival, October 12 to 19, celebrates the NEA and NFPF for their support of silent film preservation at American archives.
Saving the Silents is the collaborative project announced by the NEA and NFPF in 1999 to save endangered works by America's early filmmakers. The project sets aside $1 million in federal funds to preserve 67 rare silent-era works at the George Eastman House, the Museum of Modern Art, and the UCLA Film and Television Archive and to update the International Federation of Film Archives' authoritative database of silent film holdings, under the direction of the Pacific Film Archive at the University of California at Berkeley. The collaboration received the largest single U.S. government film preservation grant ever awarded.
Pordenone's Saving the Silents series will showcase shorts and features from each of the project participants. Kicking off the series on October 14 is Victor Fleming's The Mollycoddle, preserved by the Museum of Modern Art, a spoof with Douglas Fairbanks as a pampered Easterner who discovers his rugged roots in Arizona. The October 16 program features The Fighting Blade, a swashbuckler starring Richard Barthelmess and preserved by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The final bill on October 18 screens Raoul Walsh's Kindred of the Dust, preserved by the George Eastman House and famed for its location shooting in the logging camps of Washington state. Film notes and schedules are available on the festival web site.
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 the NFPF preservation programs, please visit the NFPF web site: www.filmpreservation.org.
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