NFPF News

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

"Movies of Local People"—the H. Lee Waters Collection goes online

Movies of Local People: Spindale (1937)

This week we’d like to direct your attention to a captivating set of movies: Duke University’s H. Lee Waters Film Collection, which consists of 92 town portraits available for online viewing.

Between 1936 and 1942 itinerant filmmaker H. Lee Waters (1902-97) filmed more than 118 small communities in the Carolinas, Virginia, and Tennessee for his series Movies of Local People. By collaborating with local movie theaters to screen his films, he allowed everyday people to see themselves on the big screen. One of the highlights of the 252-film series, Kannapolis (1940–41), was placed on the National Film Registry in 2004.

These invaluable documentaries sprang from a canny commercial sense. As Waters explained, “with the Depression and hard times, people couldn’t justify spending much money, but to be able to … Read more

Happy Independence Day!

U.S. Navy of 1915 (1915).

We’re celebrating the Fourth of July by marking the centenary of an indubitably American film, U.S. Navy of 1915. Its close-hand observations of sailors training and working aboard vintage ships have only grown more captivating and unique with age, making it the most popular film on the NFPF website by far. Nearly 250,000 viewers have streamed this fascinating glimpse of our military heritage.

This 11-minute fragment represents all that survives from what was a three reel documentary by showman Lyman Howe, whose Famous Ride on a Runaway Train (1921) appears on our DVD Lost and Found: American Treasures from the New Zealand Film Archive. Few of his other films survive, and even U.S. Navy was considered lost until this portion of the film was discovered during the NFPF’s partnership with the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia in 2008. If you haven’t already … Read more

Sponsored Films in Glorious Technicolor

The Story of Creative Capital (1957), courtesy the Hagley Museum & Library.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Technicolor Motion Picture Company, the developers of the color process that vividly brought the palette of the world to movie screens, the NFPF is pleased to present two short sponsored films made using the innovative technique.

The Story of Creative Capital (1957) is an animated lark from John Sutherland Productions made in cooperation with E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company and the Chamber of Commerce. A paean to the importance of business in American life, the film stresses the vital role of the individual investor to the capitalist system. With its jazzy color scheme and Les Baxter soundtrack, The Story of Creative Capital exemplifies the pop culture tendencies that drive many sponsored films.

Mrs. Mortimer Jones Prepares “Dinner for Eight” (1934) … Read more