Treasures from American Film Archives
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Academy Film Archive, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
- Luis Martinetti, Contortionist (1894, 1 min.), peepshow kinetoscope of the Italian acrobat made by the Edison Studios.
- Caicedo, King of the Slack Wire (1894, 1 min.), the first film shot outdoors at the Edison Studios.
- The Original Movie (1922, 8 minutes), silhouette animation satire on commercial filmmaking, by puppeteer Tony Sarg.
- Negro Leagues Baseball (1946, 8 min.), footage featuring Reece "Goose" Tatum, the Indianapolis Clowns, and the Kansas City Monarchs.
Anthology Film Archives
- Rose Hobart (1936, 19 min.), artist Joseph Cornell's celebrated found-footage film.
- Composition 1 (Themis) (1940, 4 min.), Dwinell Grant's stop-motion abstraction.
- George Dumpson's Place (1965, 8 min.), Ed Emshwiller's portrait of the scavenger artist.
George Eastman House
- The Thieving Hand (1908, 5 min.), special-effects comedy.
- The Confederate Ironclad (1912, 16 min.), Civil War adventure, here accompanied by the original music score.
- The Land Beyond the Sunset (1912, 14 min.), social problem drama about a struggling newspaper boy who yearns for a better life.
- Snow White (1916, 63 min.), live-action feature of the Brothers Grimm tale, starring Marguerite Clark.
- The Fall of the House of Usher (1928, 13 min.), avant-garde adaptation of Poe’s short story, created by James Sibley Watson, Jr., and Melville Webber.
Japanese American National Museum
- From Japanese American Communities (1927–32, 7 min.), home movies shot by Rev. Sensho Sasaki in Stockton, California, and Tacoma, Washington.
Library of Congress
- Demolishing and Building Up Star Theatre (1901, 1 min.), time-lapse demolition of a New York building, preserved from a paper print.
- Move On (1903, 1 min.), Lower East Side street scene, preserved from a paper print.
- Dog Factory (1904, 4 min.), trick film about fickle pet owners, preserved from a paper print.
- Princess Nicotine; or, The Smoke Fairy (1909, 5 min.), special-effects fantasy of a tormented smoker, by the Vitagraph Company.
- White Fawn's Devotion (1910, 11 min.), probably directed by James Young Deer and thought to be the earliest surviving film by a Native American.
Minnesota Historical Society
- Cologne: From the Diary of Ray and Esther (1939, 14 min.), small-town portrait by amateur filmmakers, Dr. and Mrs. Dowidat.
Museum of Modern Art
- Blacksmithing Scene (1893, 1 min.), first U.S. film shown publicly.
- The Gay Shoe Clerk (1903, 1 min.), comic sketch.
- Interior New York Subway, 14th St. to 42nd St. (1905, 5 min.), filmed by Biograph's Billy Bitzer shortly after the subway's opening.
- Hell's Hinges (1916, 64 min.), William S. Hart Western about a town so depraved that earns its own destruction.
- The Lonedale Operator (1911, 17 min.), D.W. Griffith's race-to-the-rescue drama, starring Blanche Sweet.
- Three American Beauties (1906, 1 min.), with rare stencil color.
National Archives and Records Administration
- We Work Again (1937, 15 min.), WPA documentary on African American re-employment, including excerpt from Orson Welles' stage play "Voodoo Macbeth".
- The Autobiography of a Jeep (1943, 10 min.), story of the soldier's all-purpose vehicle, as told by the jeep itself.
- Private Snafu: Spies (1943, 4 min.), wartime cartoon for U.S. servicemen, directed by Chuck Jones and written by Dr. Seuss.
- The Battle of San Pietro (1945, 33 min.), famed combat documentary directed by John Huston.
- The Wall (1962, 10 min.), USIA film on the Berlin Wall made for international audiences.
National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution
- From The Keystone "Patrician" (1928, 6 min.), promotional film for new passenger plane.
- From The Zeppelin Hindenburg (1936, 7 min.), movies by a vacationing American family made on board the famous lighter-than-air-craft, one year before its destruction.
National Center for Jewish Film
- From Tevye (1939, 17 min.), American Yiddish-language film, directed by Maurice Schwartz and adapted from Sholem Aleichem's stories.
National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
- From Accuracy First (ca. 1928, 5 min.), Western Union training film for women telegraph operators.
- From Groucho Marx's Home Movies (ca. 1933, 2 min.).
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
- From Beautiful Japan (1918, 15 min.), early travel-lecture feature by Benjamin Brodsky.
New York Public Library
- From La Valse (1951, 6 min.), pas de deax from George Balanchine's 1951 ballet, featuring Tanaquil Le Clercq and Nicholas Magallanes and filmed at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival.
- Battery Film (1985, 9 min.), experimental documentary of Manhattan, by animator Richard Protovin and photographer Franklin Backus.
Northeast Historic Film
- From Rural Life in Maine (ca. 1930, 12 min.), footage filmed by Elizabeth Wright near her farm of Windy Ledge, in southwestern Maine.
- From Early Amateur Sound Film (1936-37, 4 min.), scenes of family life captured by sound-film hobbyist Archie Stewart.
Pacific Film Archive
- Running Around San Francisco for an Education (ca. 1938, 2 min.), early political ad, shown in San Francisco theaters, which helped win approval of a local school bond.
- OffOn (1968, 9 min.), Scott Bartlett's avant-garde film, the first to fully merge film and video.
UCLA Film & Television Archive
- Her Crowning Glory (1911, 14 min.), household comedy, with comic team John Bunny and Flora Finch, about an eight-year old who gets her way.
- I'm Insured (1916, 3 min.), cartoon by Harry Palmer.
- The Toll of the Sea (1922, 54 min.), early two-strip Technicolor melodrama starring Anna May Wong and written by Frances Marion, here accompanied a performance of the original music score.
- The News Parade of 1934 (10 min.), Hearst Metrotone newsreel summary of the year.
- From Marian Anderson: The Lincoln Memorial Concert (1939, 8 min.), excerpt from concert, reconstructed from newsreels, outtakes, and radio broadcast materials.
University of Alaska Fairbanks
- The Chechahcos (1924, 86 min.), first feature shot entirely on location in Alaska.
West Virginia State Archives
- From West Virginia, the State Beautiful (1929, 8 min.), amateur travelogue along Route 60.
- From One-Room Schoolhouses (ca. 1935, 1 min.), amateur footage from rural Barbour County.