NFPF News

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) was the second … Read more

57 Films To Be Saved Through the NFPF’s 2015 Preservation Grants

Jessie Maple on the set of Twice as Nice (1989).

From an animated plea for peace by director Frank Tashlin to early color home movies of President Herbert Hoover and his family, the NFPF is excited to announce the most recent crop of films slated for preservation through its federally funded grant program. All together 57 films will be preserved by 32 institutions across 21 states.

Among the award winners is Jessie Maple’s 1989 independent feature Twice as Nice, which will be preserved by the Black Film Center/Archive at Indiana University. Maple took up filmmaking in the early 1970s, honing her craft at training schools and as an apprentice editor on two films by Gordon Parks. In 1975 she became the first African American woman member of the IATSE. With her husband LeRoy Patton, she founded LJ Film Productions where they produced socially engaged … Read more

The NFPF at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival

Koko's Queen (1926).

Cinephiles from around the globe will congregate this week at the beautiful Castro Theatre for the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, which celebrates its 20th anniversary with four days of silent classics and rediscoveries. Thursday's opening night showcase is the silent version of All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), introduced by our colleague Mike Mashon, Head of the Moving Image Collection at the Library of Congress. If you're wondering how this version came to exist, check out Mike’s excellent post on the Festival blog.

On Friday the NFPF joins the Pacific Film Archive in co-presenting "Amazing Tales from the Archives," a symposium from the front-line of film preservation. Among the participants will be Bryony Dixon, the British Film Institute’s Senior Curator of Silent Film, who’ll present footage concerning the RMS Lusitania, sunk 100 years ago during … Read more

Blogging for Cupid

Cullen Landis and Elinor Field in Cupid in Quarantine (1918).

The NFPF is thrilled to announce the 2015 “For the Love of Film”: The Film Preservation Blogathon, an annual fundraising event where bloggers and film lovers around the world show their support for preservation and access. This year’s edition starts today and continues through Sunday. And for the third time, the NFPF has been chosen as the charitable recipient.

In 2010, “For the Love of Film” helped the NFPF preserve three lost gems from the cache of American films found at the New Zealand Film Archive: Sunset Limited (1898), The Sergeant (1910) and The Better Man (1912)—all of which were subsequently included in the Treasures 5: The West DVD set.

In 2012, they raised money for the web premiere of the surviving reels of Alfred Hitchcock’s The White Shadow (1924)—another discovery from the New Zealand Film Archive. Thanks to the generosity of … Read more

The NFPF Invites You to Access Alley

Julius Adler and Henrietta Jacobson in Catskill Honeymoon (1950).

Welcome to the National Film Preservation Foundation’s new blog, Access Alley. We’ll be using this space to share preserved films, highlight new preservation initiatives, provide scholarly writing, and spotlight screenings happening around the world. To celebrate this new endeavor we are posting Catskill Honeymoon (1950), a playful feature-length variety revue directed by Josef Berne. The film itself is a celebration; to commemorate 50 years of marriage, a Jewish couple travels to the Young’s Gap Hotel in the Catskills and is treated to a stage show full of Borscht Belt stalwarts and Yiddish singers galore. Catskill Honeymoon is also a document of a cultural moment in Jewish American life that is now long past. We hope you enjoy this valuable slice of film history preserved by the G. William Jones Film and Video Collection of … Read more