NATIONAL FILM PRESERVATION FOUNDATION AWARDS FILM PRESERVATION GRANTS TO 36 ARCHIVES
Contact: Barb Gibson (510-531-4521, barbarawgibson@comcast.net)
Jeff Lambert (415-392-7291, lambert@filmpreservation.org)
San Francisco, CA (May 11, 2005)—Footage of FDR in the polio treatment pools of Warm Springs, The Ranger's Bride (1910) starring "Broncho Billy" Anderson, gritty urban shorts by Melvin Van Peebles, and Ernie Gehr's avant-garde classic Serene Velocity are among the 70 films to be saved through grants announced today by the National Film Preservation Foundation. The awards will enable 36 libraries, museums, and archives to save American "orphan" films that are unlikely to survive without public support.
Other historically and culturally significant works singled out for preservation include Edward S. Curtis's legendary 1914 feature made among the Kwakiutls of Vancouver Island; Martha Graham dance performances; films of Josef Albers and Frank Lloyd Wright; depression-era public health shorts used to fight malaria and typhoid fever in rural New Mexico; A Canyon Voyage by Charles Eggert; pioneering time-motion studies by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, who inspired Cheaper by the Dozen; home movies showcasing Japanese American businesses in the 1930s; early cantorial sound films; and independent works by Storm de Hirsch and Manny Kirchheimer.
"The heroic expedition of Major John Wesley Powell down the Green and Colorado Rivers has inspired Americans for generations," said Roy Webb of the University of Utah. "We are thrilled to be able to save Charles Eggert's documentary retracing the explorer's route before the canyons were flooded by the Flaming Gorge and Glen Canyon dams."
The grant recipients are:
- Anthology Film Archives (New York)
- Appalachian State University (North Carolina)
- Appalshop (Kentucky)
- Chicago Film Archives (Illinois)
- East Tennessee State University (Tennessee)
- Emory University (Georgia)
- Field Museum (Illinois)
- Florence Griswold Museum (Connecticut)
- Florida Moving Image Archive (Florida)
- George Eastman House (New York)
- Guggenheim Museum (New York)
- Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley (California)
- Hunter College, CUNY (New York)
- Japanese American National Museum (California)
- Josef and Anni Albers Foundation (Connecticut)
- Maryland Historical Society (Maryland)
- Mississippi Department of Archives and History (Mississippi)
- Museum of Modern Art (New York)
- Naropa Institute (Colorado)
- National Center for Jewish Film (Massachusetts)
- National Museum of Natural History (Washington DC)
- New Mexico State Records Center and Archives (New Mexico)
- New York Public Library, Donnell Media Center (New York)
- New York Public Library, Jerome Robbins Dance Division (New York)
- New York University (New York)
- Northeast Historic Film (Maine)
- Pacific Film Archive (California)
- Purdue University (Indiana)
- Roosevelt Institute (Georgia)
- Texas Archive of the Moving Image (Texas)
- Texas Tech University (Texas)
- Third World Newsreel (New York)
- University of Georgia (Georgia)
- University of Iowa (Iowa)
- University of Utah (Utah)
- University of Washington (Washington)
Funded through The National Film Preservation Foundation Act, the NFPF's federal grants enable archives to make new preservation masters and access copies of historically and culturally significant American films that are not owned by commercial interests. With these awards, the NFPF has advanced film preservation in 37 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico and helped save more than 800 films and collections.
The National Film Preservation Foundation is the nonprofit organization created by the U.S. Congress in 1996 to help save America's film heritage. The NFPF is the charitable affiliate of the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress. For a full list of funded projects, please visit the NFPF Web site: www.filmpreservation.org.
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