NATIONAL FILM PRESERVATION FOUNDATION AWARDS 32 PRESERVATION GRANTS
Herbert Hoover Home Movies and Jessie Maple's Twice as Nice Slated To Be Saved
Contact: David Wells (415-392-7291, wells@filmpreservation.org)
San Francisco, CA (June 4, 2015)—The National Film Preservation Foundation today announced grants to save 57 films, including early color home movies of President Herbert Hoover and his family, and The Way of Peace (1947), an animated plea for pacifism written and directed by Frank Tashlin for the American Lutheran Church that was named to the National Film Registry in 2014. All together grants were awarded to 32 institutions across 21 states.
“With a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation, the Black Film Center/Archive at Indiana University will preserve and make available Jessie Maple’s 1989 independent feature Twice as Nice,” said Brian Graney, Archivist and Head of Public Technology Services at BFC/A. “Maple’s film was the creation of many strong, talented women. It tells the tale of basketball playing twin sisters in the days before the WNBA and uses real-life locations and nonprofessional actors to realize the screenplay by Saundra Pearl Sharp, the poet and actress who co-founded the Black Anti-Defamation Coalition. We can’t wait to share it with new audiences.”
Among the other films funded for preservation are Ambassadors in Levis (ca. 1970), about the Tucson Arizona Boys Chorus; Czechoslovakia: Portrait of a Tragedy (1968), an American documentary shot during the Prague Spring and featuring an interview with Vaclav Havel; corporate films of the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company, for many years the only African-American owned corporation in California; the first student works by experimental animator Frank Mouris, whose Frank Film won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film in 1974; and home movies of the 1944 Republican National Convention, Winston Churchill in Cuba, and the Santa Fe Fiesta. For a full list, click here.
The NFPF preservation grants target newsreels, silent-era films, 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 its creation by Congress in 1996, the NFPF has provided preservation support to 276 institutions and saved more than 2,223 films 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 operating and project funding from other sources.
The grant recipients are:
- Alaska Film Archives (AK)
- American Baptist Historical Society (GA)
- Amistad Research Center (LA)
- Anthology Film Archives (NY)
- Biodiversity Research Institute (NY)
- Black Film Center/Archive (IN)
- Center for Home Movies (MD)
- Center for Visual Music (CA)
- Chicago Film Archives (IL)
- Emory University (GA)
- George Eastman House (NY)
- Herbert Hoover Presidential Library-Museum (IA)
- Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University (CA)
- Montana Historical Society (MT)
- Mote Marine Laboratory (FL)
- National Museum of African American History and Culture (DC)
- New Mexico State Records Center and Archives (NM)
- New York University Libraries (NY)
- North Scituate Public Library (RI)
- Northeast Historic Film (ME)
- Oregon Historical Society (OR)
- Silver Bow Art (MT)
- Texas Archive of the Moving Image (TX)
- Trisha Brown Dance Company (NY)
- UCLA Film & Television Archive (CA)
- UCLA Library (CA)
- University of Arizona (AZ)
- University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (PA)
- Washington University in St. Louis (MO)
- Wayne State University (MI)
- Wende Museum (CA)
- Yale Film Study Center (MA)
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.
# # # # #