NATIONAL FILM PRESERVATION FOUNDATION AWARDS FILM PRESERVATION GRANTS TO 17 ARCHIVES
Contact: Jeff Lambert (415-392-7291, lambert@filmpreservation.org)
San Francisco, CA (October 7, 2004)—The National Film Preservation Foundation announced today grants to 17 archives, museums, and universities to save historically and culturally significant American films not preserved by commercial interests. Among the award-winning projects are footage by John Logan of his 1939 motorcycle expedition that blazed the trail for the Alcan Highway, the first known film of the "forbidden cities" of Tibet (1935), home movies documenting Mississippi Delta farms in the mid-1940s, and avant-garde masterpieces by Harry Smith, Paul Sharits, and Meredith Monk.
"The daring and ingenuity required to cut a trail for 300-pound motorcycles across miles of mountains and swamps can be savored sixty-five years later through Logan's film," said Laurence Fishburne, a National Film Preservation Foundation board member and avid motorcyclist. "Films like this drive home the value of documentary footage held in America's archives."
Among the other grant-winning projects are films of natural history expeditions to Angola, Nigeria, and the Galapagos; documentaries developed by the State of Pennsylvania to promote model forestry practices in the early 1930s; a 1940 portrait of Statesville, North Carolina; films of the Bella Lewitzky Dance Company; and footage of the Mardi Gras festivities of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club.
The grants distribute federal funds authorized by The National Film Preservation Foundation Act of 1996 and secured through the Library of Congress, as well as preservation services contributed by public-spirited laboratories and postproduction houses. Since starting operations in 1997, the NFPF has provided preservation support to 100 American archives, libraries, museums, and universities across 36 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The NFPF programs have saved more than 730 films.
The grant recipients are:
- American Museum of Natural History (New York)
- Anthology Film Archives (New York)
- Center for Visual Music (California)
- Donnell Media Center, New York Public Library (New York)
- Duke University (North Carolina)
- Field Museum (Illinois)
- George Eastman House (New York)
- Historic New Orleans Collection (Louisiana)
- House Foundation for the Arts (New York)
- Mississippi Department of Archives and History (Mississippi)
- Pennsylvania State Archives (Pennsylvania)
- Roger Tory Peterson Institute (New York)
- San Francisco Media Archive (California)
- South Dakota State Agricultural Heritage Museum (South Dakota)
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington D.C.)
- University of Alaska Fairbanks (Alaska)
- University of Southern California (California)
The National Film Preservation Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to saving America's film heritage. Created by the U.S. Congress, the NFPF is the charitable affiliate of the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress. For the complete list of projects supported by the NFPF as well as the list of laboratory and post-production house donors, visit the NFPF Web site: www.filmpreservation.org
# # # # #