NFPF ANNOUNCES FILMS IN MORE TREASURES DVD
3-DVD Box Set of Rare Films (1894-1931) Never Before Available on Quality Video
Contact: Barbara Gibson (510-531-4521, barbarawgibson@comcast.net)
San Francisco, CA (July 21, 2004)—The National Film Preservation Foundation announced today the contents of its new 3-DVD box set, More Treasures from American Film Archives: 50 Films, 1894-1931, to be released by Image Entertainment on September 7 (retail price $79.95). The 9-1/2 hour set showcases the astonishing range and vitality of American motion pictures during their first four decades through works preserved by the nation's foremost silent-film archives.
The programs span 40 years, from the earliest surviving sound film, produced in 1894 by Thomas Edison's laboratory, to A Bronx Morning (1931), the dynamic urban montage by Jay Leyda. Among the rare works are Clash of the Wolves starring the original Rin-Tin-Tin, the first surviving film of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Ernst Lubitsch's Lady Windermere's Fan, kinetoscopes of Annie Oakley and other Wild West stars, a sing-along with Ko-Ko the Clown, educational shorts on making light bulbs and telephone etiquette, the earliest film of a Martha Graham dance, a cartoon satire on prohibition by Gregory La Cava, and footage of the rural south by novelist Zora Neale Hurston. None of the 50 films and 6 previews have previously been available on good-quality video. A four-page brochure listing the contents can be downloaded from the NFPF Web site, www.filmpreservation.org.
The new box set has many special features for DVD audiences:
- Newly recorded music contributed by 30 musicians and composers
- Commentary by 17 historians, critics, and preservationists
- 200-page illustrated book with essays about the films and music
- Over 500 interactive screens and 3 postcards from the films
More Treasures reunites the curatorial and technical team that produced the NFPF's award-winning DVD set, Treasures from American Film Archives: 50 Preserved Films (2000). Funded in part through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, More Treasures reproduces the superb film preservation work of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, George Eastman House, the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, and the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Net proceeds from the set will support further film preservation. The complete slate includes:
PROGRAM 1
- Dickson Experimental Sound Film (ca. 1894, 15 sec.), first surviving sound film
- Annie Oakley, Buffalo Dance, Bucking Broncho (1894, 1 min.), Buffalo Bill's Wild West performers
- The Suburbanite (1904, 9 min.), "sitcom" of New Yorkers in the suburbs
- The Country Doctor (1909, 14 min.), D.W. Griffith's tragic masterpiece
- The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz (1910, 13 min.), first surviving film of the Baum novel
- Admiral Cigarette, The Stenographer's Friend and other early in-theater ads (1897-1926, 10 min.)
- The Invaders (1912, 41 min.), Thomas Ince Western featuring Lakota Sioux actors
- The Hazards of Helen (1915, 14 min.), Episode 26 from this woman's action series
- Gretchen the Greenhorn (1916, 58 min.), immigrants, led by Dorothy Gish, thwart counterfeiters
- The Breath of a Nation (1919, 5 min.), Gregory La Cava cartoon on prohibition
- De-Light: Making an Electric Light Bulb (1920, 12 min.)
- Skyscraper Symphony (1929, 9 min.), Robert Florey's portrait of Manhattan
- Greeting by George Bernard Shaw (1928, 5 min.), first talkie of the playwright
PROGRAM 2
- What Happened on Twenty-Third Street, At the Foot of the Flatiron, New York City "Ghetto" Fish Market (1901-03, 5 min.), Manhattan actualities
- From Leadville to Aspen (1906, 8 min.), train hold-up film
- The "Teddy" Bears (1907, 13 min.), political satire, fairy tale, and puppet animation
- Children Who Labor (1912, 13 min.), crusading melodrama co-produced by the National Child Labor Committee
- The Flute of Krishna (1926, 12 min.), first film of a Martha Graham dance, and two other color experiments
- Surviving reel of Lotus Blossom (1921, 12 min.), earliest known film from a Chinese American company
- Gus Visser and His Singing Duck (ca. 1925, 90 sec.), vaudeville sound film
- Clash of the Wolves (1925, 74 min.), action feature starring the original Rin-Tin-Tin
- International Newsreel (1926, 13 min.)
- Now You're Talking (1927, 9 min.), instructional cartoon on how to use a telephone
- There It Is (1928, 19 min.), Charley Bowers comedy with animated objects
- A Bronx Morning (1931, 11 min.), avant-garde documentary by Jay Leyda
PROGRAM 3
- Rip Van Winkle (1896, 4 min.), starring Joseph Jefferson in eight mutoscopes
- Mr. Edison at Work in His Chemical Laboratory (1897, 30 sec.)
- Life of an American Fireman (1903, 6 min.), documentary drama by Edwin S. Porter
- Westinghouse Works (1904, 6 min.), location shooting in America's largest factory
- Falling Leaves (1912, 12 min.), family melodrama directed by Alice Guy Blaché
- Hollywood Promotional Films (1918-1926, 14 min.), a teaser for Hands Up, the Movie Lovers' Contest, and a newsreel on the filming of Greed
- De Forest Phonofilms (1923-24, 11 min.), A Few Moments with Eddie Cantor and President Coolidge in the first talking political spot
- Inklings (1925, 6 min.), Dave Fleischer cartoon
- Lady Windermere's Fan (1925, 89 min), Ernst Lubitsch's masterpiece based on the Oscar Wilde play
- Cockeyed (ca. 1925, 3 min.), trick photographic views of Manhattan
- Prologue from The Passaic Textile Strike (1926, 18 min.), docudrama by striking workers
- Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926, 4 min.), follow-the-bouncing-ball sing along
- Zora Neale Hurston's fieldwork footage of the South (1928, 7 min.)
- Trailers for Six Lost Films (10 min.)
The National Film Preservation Foundation, the nonprofit organization created by the U.S. Congress to help save America's film heritage, is the charitable affiliate of the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress. Since starting operations in 1997, the NFPF has advanced film preservation in 36 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia and has helped save more than 690 films.
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