NFPF News

2025 Avant-Garde Masters Grants to Preserve Seventeen Films

Better Be Careful (1986) by Heather McAdams

The National Film Preservation Foundation and The Film Foundation are pleased to announce the 2025 Avant-Garde Masters Grants. Works by Heather McAdams, Kathleen Laughlin, and Michael Mideke will be preserved and made accessible with generous funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. 

The Chicago Film Society will continue its efforts to preserve the work of Chicago-based alternative cartoonist and filmmaker Heather McAdams, with eight titles slated for restoration. Known for her playful use of found footage and recontextualized sound, this selection represents a vibrant cross-section of McAdams’s body of work—highlighting her humor, inventive use of media, and distinctive filmmaking techniques. From early Super 8 student films like The Dream (1978) and Dr. Loomis (1978) to Jay Elvis (1991), an eccentric portrait of an Elvis … Read more

Five Silent Films Premiere on the NFPF Website: Starring Clara Bow, Richard Barthelmess, Corinne Griffith, and Hank Mann

Clara Bow is unlucky at cards but lucky in love in Poisoned Paradise (1924).

To celebrate Silent Movie Day the National Film Preservation Foundation is proud to present five new silent films in our online screening room. All were preserved with NFPF support and all but one are appearing online—and on video—for the very first time. The HD videos are presented with notes and new scores by Michael Mortilla and Ben Model, two of the finest silent film accompanists working today. The titles include three features—Poisoned Paradise (1924), a melodrama starring Clara Bow; The Fighting Blade (1923), a costume drama starring and produced by Richard Barthlemess; A Virgin’s Sacrifice (1922), a frozen north saga starring Corinne Griffith—and two shorts: the Hank Mann comedy Way Out West (1920) … Read more

81 Films to be Preserved by the 2025 NFPF Preservation Grants

Eight public service and promotional films featuring Hollywood stars will be preserved by the George Eastman Museum with NFPF support. In this untitled teaser from 1952 Joan Crawford fundraises for a Texas clinic that cared for children with polio.

The National Film Preservation Foundation is proud to announce the recipients of its 2025 federally funded grants, which will allow 31 institutions across 14 states and the District of Columbia to preserve 81 films.

The richly varied selection ranges from Joan Crawford to Jordan Belson, Herbert Hoover to forensic science founder Dr. Rutherford Birchard Hayes Gradwohl, and it stretches from Polish Highlanders in Chicago to the Iñupiat in Alaska. The grant-winners encompass almost every genre of “orphan film.” These highlights give a taste of the selection—to see the full list of 2025 grant recipients, go here. … Read more

THE BARGAIN in the NFPF Screening Room

William S. Hart in The Bargain (1914)

The NFPF has the pleasure of announcing that The Bargain (1914) is now available for free viewing in our online screening room. This epochal western, produced by Thomas Ince, directed by Reginald Barker, and added to the National Film Registry in 2010, marked the feature film debut of William S. Hart, one of the genre's greatest stars. It kicked off Hart’s decade-long mission of giving the Western a greater semblance of realism and intense morality. Hart plays his favorite character type, the “good badman,” the outlaw who finds redemption in uneasy reach.

Though The Bargain is available elsewhere online, our copy is in High Definition and graced with a score by Ben Model! Our thanks to the Library of Congress for providing a scan of the 35mm paper print, originally deposited at the Library for copyright purposes in 1914, and for … Read more

7 More Movies Join the Online Field Guide to Sponsored Films

We’re happy to announce seven recent additions to the Online Field Guide to Sponsored Films, the free screening room featuring movies from The Field Guide to Sponsored Films, written by Rick Prelinger and published by the NFPF in 2006. All seven additions are derived from HD scans created by the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center of the Library of Congress.

A wedding is one of the many joys of everyday existence celebrated on three screens in To Be Alive! (1964).

These films in were produced for a richly varied set of reasons. Some titles were commissioned by charities highlighting their good works, as with On the Firing Line (1936). Sponsored by the National Tuberculosis Association, this public health travelogue highlights cross-country locations that have played a part in the struggle against tuberculosis and discusses modern treatment methods. … Read more