NFPF News

NFPF-preserved films at the Orphan Film Symposium

Like this man, attendees of the Orphan Film Symposium will learn The Four Pillars of Income (1939).

The Orphan Film Symposium will be held April 8-11 at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. As always, this event will bring together scholars, archivists, curators, media artists, preservationists, and collectors. This year’s theme is “Crisis and Community,” and each day of the symposium includes the presentation of a film preserved through NFPF grants.

The very first screening on the first day, presented by Ashley Dequilla from the Filipino American Historical Society of Chicago, is of five films made between 1936 and 1955 by amateur filmmaker Nicholas Viernes that document Filipino American families and their midwestern communities. On day two John Morton of the Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound, a part of the Knox County Public Library, … Read more

The Orphan Film Symposium

This week the 10th Orphan Film Symposium kicks off at the Library of Congress’s Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation. Convened by New York University, this edition of the Symposium focuses on recorded sound and will be attended by archivists, preservationists, technicians, and scholars from around the world.

The symposium’s schedule includes a lecture from Rick Prelinger, author of the NFPF’s Field Guide to Sponsored Films, on film preservation issues of the 21st century and a presentation by film restorers Robert Gitt and Robert Heiber on “A Century of Sound.” There will also be screenings of films including Count Us In (1948), a presidential campaign short for the Progressive Party’s Henry Wallace, and Little Orphant Annie (1918), one of Collen Moore’s first starring roles, to be presented along with a 1912 audio recording of the eponymous James Whitcomb Riley … Read more

Orphan Film Spotlight—Blackie the Wonder Horse Swims the Golden Gate (1938)

Blackie arrives in San Francisco after a pleasant swim.

The mission of the NFPF is to save and make accessible “orphan films.” These are movies unprotected by commercial interests, including documentaries, silent films, newsreels, home movies, avant-garde works, industrial films, and independent productions. “Orphan Film Spotlight” is a new regular feature of our blog and will highlight orphans preserved through our grant programs that are viewable online. Our inaugural selection has an unusual premise and unforgettable title: Blackie the Wonder Horse Swims the Golden Gate.

The story behind the film begins and ends at Roberts-at-the-Beach, a San Francisco restaurant owned by Richard “Shorty” Roberts. One day Shorty was arguing with Bill Kyne, owner of the famed Bay Meadows Racetrack, about whether horses could swim. Shorty … Read more

The NFPF at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival

Koko's Queen (1926).

Cinephiles from around the globe will congregate this week at the beautiful Castro Theatre for the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, which celebrates its 20th anniversary with four days of silent classics and rediscoveries. Thursday's opening night showcase is the silent version of All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), introduced by our colleague Mike Mashon, Head of the Moving Image Collection at the Library of Congress. If you're wondering how this version came to exist, check out Mike’s excellent post on the Festival blog.

On Friday the NFPF joins the Pacific Film Archive in co-presenting "Amazing Tales from the Archives," a symposium from the front-line of film preservation. Among the participants will be Bryony Dixon, the British Film Institute’s Senior Curator of Silent Film, who’ll present footage concerning the … Read more

The NFPF Invites You to Access Alley

Julius Adler and Henrietta Jacobson in Catskill Honeymoon (1950).

Welcome to the National Film Preservation Foundation’s new blog, Access Alley. We’ll be using this space to share preserved films, highlight new preservation initiatives, provide scholarly writing, and spotlight screenings happening around the world. To celebrate this new endeavor we are posting Catskill Honeymoon (1950), a playful feature-length variety revue directed by Josef Berne. The film itself is a celebration; to commemorate 50 years of marriage, a Jewish couple travels to the Young’s Gap Hotel in the Catskills and is treated to a stage show full of Borscht Belt stalwarts and Yiddish singers galore. Catskill Honeymoon is also a document of a cultural moment in Jewish American life that is now long past. We hope you enjoy this valuable slice of film history preserved by the G. William Jones Film and Video … Read more