NATIONAL FILM PRESERVATION FOUNDATION AWARDS 36 PRESERVATION GRANTS:
1919 “LAWRENCE OF ARABIA” EPIC AND JOHN FORD’S HOME MOVIES TO BE SAVED
Contact: Barb Gibson (510-531-4521, gibson@filmpreservation.org)
San Francisco, CA (June 15, 2011)—The National Film Preservation Foundation today announced grants to save 64 films, including Lowell Thomas’s 1919 With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia, the phenomenally popular silent-era documentary that made T.E. Lawrence a household name, and director John Ford’s home movies. Awards went to 36 institutions. With these grants, the NFPF has enabled museums, libraries, and museums in every state to rescue and make available historically significant American films that would have been unlikely to survive without public support.
Among the other works pegged for preservation are filmed performances by Duke Ellington and Mahalia Jackson at the first New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival; the Yiddish-language feature Catskill Honeymoon (1950); George Wallace’s 1968 presidential campaign film created for the California primary; Fidel! (1969) by Saul Landau; a 1926 tour through the Anaconda Copper Mining Company’s operation in Great Falls, Montana; Diary of an African Nun, adapted by Julie Dash from the Alice Walker short story; Robert Gardner’s portrait of the 1964 Boston Marathon; and Operation Breadbasket (1969), the story of a successful Southern Christian Leadership Conference job training program, produced by actor Robert Culp.
"The NFPF grants, which are funded through the Library of Congress, are a winning strategy for keeping our history alive," said Alfre Woodard, who serves on the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities and the NFPF Board. "The educational benefits from the initiative will be enjoyed for decades to come.”
The NFPF preservation grants target newsreels, silent-era films, documentaries, culturally important home movies, avant-garde films, and endangered independent productions that fall under the radar of commercial preservation programs. The awards provide support to create a film preservation master and two access copies of each work. Films saved through the NFPF programs are made available to the public for on-site research and are seen widely through screenings, exhibits, DVDs, television broadcasts, and the Internet.
Since created by Congress in 1996, the NFPF has provided preservation support to 232 institutions and saved more than 1,800 films and collections through grants and collaborative projects. The NFPF also publishes the award-winning Treasures from American Film Archives DVD series, which makes available rare films preserved by public and nonprofit archives that have not been commercially distributed. The NFPF receives federal money through the Library of Congress to distribute as grants but raises all operating and project funding from other sources.
The 36 spring grant recipients are:
- Alabama Department of Archives and History (AL)
- Allied Productions (NY)
- American Dance Festival (NC)
- Anthology Film Archives (NY)
- Appalshop (KY)
- Archives of American Art (DC)
- Carnegie Hall Archives (NY)
- Colorado State University (CO)
- Folkstreams (VA)
- George Eastman House (NY)
- Guggenheim Museum (NY)
- History Center of Traverse City (MI)
- The History Museum (MT)
- Indiana University (IN)
- Johns Hopkins University (MD)
- Kartemquin Films (IL)
- Louisiana State Museum (NO)
- Marist College (NY)
- Maryland Historical Society (MD)
- National WWII Museum (NO)
- New York Public Library (NY)
- Northeast Historic Film (ME)
- Portland State University (OR)
- Science Museum of Minnesota (MN)
- South Dakota State Archives (SD)
- Southern Methodist University (TX)
- Studio7Arts (MA)
- UCLA Film & Television Archive (CA)
- University of Arizona (AZ)
- University of Arkansas (AR)
- University of California, Riverside (CA)
- University of Georgia (GA)
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (NC)
- University of North Carolina School of the Arts (NC)
- West Virginia State Archives (WV)
- Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research (WI)
The National Film Preservation Foundation is the nonprofit organization created by the U.S. Congress 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 the complete list of projects supported by the NFPF, visit the NFPF Web site: www.filmpreservation.org.
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