NFPF News

NFPF Preserved Films at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto

Anna May Wong in Drifting (1923).

Held annually in Pordenone, northern Italy, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto is the biggest and most prestigious silent film festival in the world. The 34th edition, beginning October 3, will showcase five films preserved through the NFPF’s grant programs.

From George Eastman House come two premieres of recently completed restorations. Thirty Years of Motion Pictures (1927) is a film adaptation of pioneering producer and publicist Terry Ramsaye's history book on the early movie industry, A Million and One Nights (1926). The documentary includes scenes from lost films such as D.W. Griffith’s 1914 version of The Battle of the Sexes.

Drifting (1923) is Todd Browning’s underworld saga about opium smuggling in China, starring Priscilla Dean, Wallace Beery, and Anna May Wong. GEH has restored the film by drawing on a nitrate print from the Nardoni Film … Read more

Orphan Film Spotlight—Roach’s Lullaby (1973) and Welcome to Spivey’s Corner (1978)

Coharie elder Leonard Emanuel demonstrates hollerin' techniques in Welcome to Spivey's Corner (1978).

Thanks to everyone who attended last week’s Exploratorium screening of films preserved through NFPF funding. Those who couldn’t make it will be glad to know two of the screening’s biggest hits can be watched online.

Roach’s Lullaby (1973), preserved by the New York Public Library, was praised by the New York Times as a witty and “bold excursion into one of the city’s great conflicts—the war against the roach.” The documentary profiles three New Yorkers who demonstrate eccentric methods of pest removal. Directed by Claudia Weill and Eli Noyes, Roach’s Lullaby is a prime example of on-the-go, hand-held 16mm documentary-making. And yes, it has a song about roaches.

Welcome to Spivey’s Corner (1978), directed by Kier Cline, documents the “National Hollerin’ … Read more

Seven Films to be Preserved Through Avant-Garde Masters Grants

Gregory Markopoulos’ Twice a Man (1963)

Owen Land’s “structuralist” subversions, a Ken Jacobs reckoning with silent narrative, a mythic reverie from Gregory Markopoulos, an early work from Fred Camper, and a poetic nature study from montage maestro Slavko Vorkapich will all be saved through the 2015 Avant-Garde Masters Grants awarded by The Film Foundation and the National Film Preservation Foundation. All told, seven films will be preserved and made available through the 2015 grants.

Gregory Markopoulos’ Twice a Man, starring Olympia Dukakis and Paul Klib, will be saved through a grant to Temenos, an archive dedicated to the work of Markopoulos, which will partner with the Austrian Film Museum to complete preservation of this landmark film. Often cited as Markopoulos’ masterpiece, this modern take on the Hippolytus myth was a leap forward in the creation of what he … Read more

The National Film Preservation Foundation at the Exploratorium

33 Yo-Yo Tricks (1976)

On Thursday, September 17th, the Exploratorium in San Francisco will present “Scintillating 16mm: Newly Preserved Gems from American Archives,” a program of eight films from all corners of America. From Faces and Fortunes (1960), a sponsored film that uses animation and collage to extoll the benefits of brand recognition through the ages, to the appropriately titled 33 Yo-Yo Tricks (1976), the screening celebrates a love of cinematic technique and exploration.

Also on the program are short documentaries such as Tom Palazzolo’s Jerry’s (1976), a breakneck portrait of a Chicago deli owner; avant-garde films from Ian Hugo and Stuart Sherman; and Stop Cloning Around (1980) from amateur filmmaking legend Sid Laverents.

Please visit the Exploratorium’s website for a full program and details on how to attend.

Spotlight on Home Movies

Slavko Vorkapich, 1940

Last Sunday, TV viewers were treated to a news segment on home movies, broadcast by CBS Sunday Morning. Now available online, "Bringing the importance of home movies into focus," showed the origins of small-gauge consumer filmmaking and emphasized the need for preservation by featuring archivists from George Eastman House and The Center for Home Movies.

Those organizations and many others have received funding from NFPF grants to preserve hundreds of home movies, many of which are now online. Here’s a brief but diverse sampler: From the Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum come the home movies of Marie Dickerson Coker, an African American jazz musician, dancer, and pilot who filmed in Honolulu during the second world war. From The Clyfford Still Museum comes a home movie of Clyfford Still in his studio, the only known moving images of the Abstract Expressionist painter. And from … Read more