NATIONAL FILM PRESERVATION FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES AVANT-GARDE DVD SET
NEA and Andy Warhol Foundation Grants Fund Production of Treasures IV
Contact: Jeff Lambert (415-392-7291, lambert@filmpreservation.org)
San Francisco, CA (December 26, 2006)—The National Film Preservation Foundation announced today a $40,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to produce a DVD set of American postwar avant-garde films. The grant complements a $100,000 grant awarded earlier this year by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The fourth in the NFPF's award-winning Treasures from American Film Archives series, the new two-disc anthology will be released in fall 2008.
Treasures IV: The American Avant-Garde Film, 1945-1985 will showcase films preserved by the nation's preeminent avant-garde film repositories—the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Anthology Film Archives, the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library, and the Pacific Film Archive—and will illustrate the diverse currents in avant-garde filmmaking during the four decades following World War II. Represented will be animation, nature and still life films, portraiture, underground narratives, dance films, works of social engagement, city symphonies, and explorations of film as a medium.
"Films cannot be appreciated unless they are seen," said Steve Anker, Dean of the Film Department at CalArts and a member of the DVD set's curatorial committee. "Since the digital revolution, film artists have been increasingly interested in making their work available for classroom and home use, especially since 16mm has become difficult to experience. Treasures IV is sure to introduce many new viewers to, and remind many others of, this culturally vital American film art."
The NFPF's Treasures from American Film Archives (2000; Encore Edition, 2005) and More Treasures from American Film Archives, 1894-1931 (2004) rediscovered dozens of little-known American motion pictures and won Film Heritage Awards from the National Society of Film Critics. Both are basic tools in libraries and universities. The NFPF four-DVD set, Treasures III: The Social Issue Film, 1900-1934, will be released in fall 2007. Treasures IV is the NFPF's first avant-garde anthology.
The National Film Preservation Foundation is the nonprofit organization created by the U.S. Congress to help save America's film heritage. Since starting operations in 1997, the NFPF has assisted institutions in 38 states and helped preserve more than 1035 films. The NFPF is the charitable affiliate of the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress. For more information on the NFPF's programs, please visit www.filmpreservation.org.
# # # # #