NFPF News

"Soft Shoes" at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival

Starting May 30th the San Francisco Silent Film Festival will celebrate its 20th anniversary with five days of programs showcasing silent classics from around the world. The NFPF is honored to have played a part in the celebration by supporting the preservation of Soft Shoes (1925), which screens May 31 with live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin.

"Harry Carey is willing to risk an eye as Lillian Rich adjusts her stocking" in Soft Shoes (1925). Photo and text from Exhibitor’s Trade Review, March 14, 1925.

Directed by Lloyd Ingraham and photographed by Sol Polito, Soft Shoes was part of a series of Westerns produced by Hunt Stromberg and starring Harry Carey. Set in 1925, the semi-comedic story involves small-town western sheriff Pat Halahan (Carey) visiting San Francisco and apprehending the alluring burglar Faith O’Day (Lillian Rich), who had attempted to rob his hotel room. … Read more

EYE International Film Conference Presentation

Flaming Canyons (1929)

Held annually at EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, the EYE Film Conference attracts archivists, curators, and film scholar and preservationists from around the world. This year’s conference will be held from May 27—29 and themed Activating the Archive: Audio-Visual Collections and Civic Engagement, Political Dissent and Societal Change.

The NFPF will take part on Monday, May 28 with the presentation “National Parks, Nitrate Film, and America's Memory of the Commons.” The National Park Service was created by Congress in 1916, and today more than 400 National Parks enrich the nation. Early cinematic depictions of the parks show us how these lands and their natural beauty have served citizens and visitors since their opening, and take us back to the now-distant years of their first public use.

The National Film Preservation Foundation—in collaboration with the EYE … Read more

NFPF Films at the Orphan Film Symposium

Cullen Landis and Elinor Field as lovebirds at the mercy of the law in Cupid in Quarantine (1918).

The 11th Orphan Film Symposium will be held April 11-14 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York. Presented by New York University’s Department of Cinema Studies and its Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program, the event brings together scholars, archivists, curators, media artists, preservationists, and collectors. Orphan works will be screened and presented, including four films preserved through NFPF funding.

Laserimage (1972), Ivan Dryer’s celluloid forerunner to his Laserium light show, was preserved by New York University.

Blackie the Wonder Horse Swims the Golden Gate (1938), a newsreel story covering the Wonder Horse’s legendary transbay swim from Marin to San Francisco, was preserved by the San Francisco Media Archive and is part of “A Screening in Tribute to Stephen … Read more

View 6 More “Lost” Films at the NFPF Website

The stencil-colored splendor of Flaming Canyons (1929).

Six more films, from the NFPF’s ongoing partnership with EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, are now available for online viewing in our screening room. These freshly preserved American silent films, unseen since their original release more than 90 years ago, are accompanied by new music from composers Michael Mortilla, Ben Model, and Stephen Horne, and by program notes from scholars and silent film experts. The NFPF-led project enabled three film archives to supervise the preservation of this set of sponsored films, travelogues, and comedies. The preservation and web presentation of the nonfiction films was made possible through a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, not only handled the preservation of two industrial films, but also provided … Read more

33 More Films Added to NFPF’s Online Field Guide to Sponsored Films

1999 A.D. (1967)

Today the National Film Preservation Foundation adds 33 more films to its digital access project the Online Field Guide to Sponsored Films, a screening room that presents films from the 2006 book The Field Guide to Sponsored Films, written by Rick Prelinger and published by the NFPF with the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The screening room gathers 135 sponsored films, all commissioned during the past century by a host of American organizations: businesses promoting commercial products, charities highlighting their good works, advocacy groups bringing attention to social causes, and state and local governments explaining their programs.

The 33 new films in the screening room range across two thirds of the 20th century: Hotel Del Monte, sponsored by Southern Pacific Railroad to promote a resort in Monterey, California, is from … Read more