If I may, I'd like to supplement Jeremy's "Foundation" post with some information about the current Library of Congress National Film Registry Tour: In addition to creating the Foundation, the National Film Preservation Act of 1996 re-authorized the National Film Preservation Board (NFRB) and the National Film Registry (NFR)---each established by federal legislation in 1988--- for seven more years. These creatures of statute supplement the work of the Library of Congress' (LOC) own motion picture conservation center, established in 1969. In brief, the NFPB is charged with the preservation not only of past feature films but, indeed, with the entire motion picture heritage of America, which embraces a creative range that far exceeds the output of Hollywood. The Board therefore seeks to preserve important works from every field of film production, including independent films, home movies, animated shorts, experimental and avant-garde films, newsreels, and other genres. The members of the NFPB represent all areas of the national film community: Producers, film critics, teachers, archivists, indepen- dent filmmakers, actors, writers, theater owners, and distributors. In keeping with the NFPB's statutory mandate, the members are committed to increasing public awareness of the need for film preservation. The NFR, in brief, comprises a collection of films selected by the Librarian of Congress (after a national nominating process) for preservation at the rate of not more than 25 films per year. The selection criteria require that a film be at least ten years old and that it be of "aesthetic, historical or cultural" importance to the nation. Since the NFR's creation, 175 films have been added to the Registry. The selection of a film obligates the LOC to do all it can to ensure that the film is preserved--- whether by the LOC, the film's original creators, or another archive---for posterity in its original form. Thus, selection includes obtaining archival copies of each film for preservation within the LOC. Anyone, by the way, can nominate a film (as long as it meets the selection criteria) for inclusion in the Registry. In fact, the Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington, is currently seeking nominations for addition to the NFR in 1998. For consideration, you should forward your nominations (with a limit of 50 titles per person per year, please :-) to: National Film Registry Library of Congress, MBRS Division Washington, D.C. 20540 Attn: Steve Leggett Alternatively, you may E-mail your nominations to Mr. Leggett: [log in to unmask] The *really exciting* part of all this is that ensuring the availability of good quality projection prints is also one of the purposes of the NFR. To this end, the NFR has chosen 36 representative films to tour on exhibition throughout the United States. The twofold goal of the tour is (1) to garner the appreciation of audiences across the country for the artistry involved in these films and (2) to obtain nationwide support for the effort to protect and preserve these films, as well as the rest of America's endangered film heritage. In aid of this goal, the participating studios have contributed new prints of their titles to the tour and have waived their usual screening fees. In the case of _The Treasure of the Sierra Madre_, the print is based on a restoration carried out by the NFR. The tour is funded, in part, by the James Madison Council of the Library of Congress, with additional support from The Film Foundation and Turner Classic Movies. The tour began in late 1996. It makes one stop in each state, exhibits the 36 films for approximately ten days, and moves on. Because each stop on the tour costs between $5,000 and $8,000, the tour has reached only about 25 states thus far. The tour tries to book into "movie palace"-type theatres in cities with relatively high cinephilic populations, on the one hand, and relatively few competing movie theatres, on the other. Thus, when the tour reaches New York, the plan is to book it into Syracuse, which has a good movie-going population, rather than New York City, which has too many competing theatres. The most recent stop on the tour was in January in San Francisco, California, at the Castro Theatre. (In keeping with the booking plan, the Castro is a huge movie palace, not yet divided into multiplexes. Additionally, San Francisco has a large and sophisticated film audience but fewer movie theatres than Los Angeles. Hence the choice of San Francisco rather than Los Angeles.) Because of the scarcity of funding for each stop on the tour, the tour is planned only one or two stops in advance. I believe the next stop after San Francisco is Wichita, Kansas. I was thrilled to be able to see five of the touring films during the San Francisco stop. (Of course, I had great plans to see at least 20 of the 36, but we all know how *that* goes. :-) In spite of the high costs of the tour, the price of admission to the films does not appear to carry any premium. Thus, in San Francisco, the admission prices were the Castro Theatre's normal ticket prices: $6.50 for one adult for an entire evening (regardless of the number of films screened), and $4.00 for a senior or a bargain matinee (good for the entire day and evening). I've listed the touring films below. (For reasons that I don't know, _The River_ (Farm Security Administration, 1937) was not available for screening in San Francisco.) While the NFR has, of course, selected the 36 touring films, the programming of the films at each stop is left to the discretion of the host theatre. Because the programming of the films in San Francisco was quite unique and publicly praised by the LOC representative accompanying the tour, I've listed the films in the order in which they screened here. I know you'll appreciate the programming: Day One -- Opening Night & Celebration: Silent Classics _The Cheat_ (DeMille, 1915) _The Great Train Robbery_ (Porter, 1903) _Gertie the Dinosaur_ (McCay, 1914) Special appearance and introductory comments by Arthur Hiller, NFPB member. Day Two _The Learning Tree_ (Parks, 1969) _On the Waterfront_ (Kazan, 1954) _Raging Bull_ (Scorsese, 1980) Day Three _The March of Time: Inside Nazi Germany--1938_ (Time, Inc., 1938) _The Battle of San Pietro_ (US Army Signal Corps (directed by Major John Huston), 1945) _The Treasure of the Sierra Madre_ (Huston, 1948) _Chinatown_ (Polanski, 1974) Day Four _Gigi_ (Minnelli, 1958) _Ninotchka_ (Lubitsch, 1939) _Big Business_ (Horne & McCarey, 1929) _Safety Last_ (Newmeyer & Taylor, 1923) _What's Opera, Doc?_ (Jones, 1957) _Duck Soup_ (McCarey, 1933) Day Five _Within Our Gates_ (Micheaux, 1919) _Letter From an Unknown Woman_ (Ophuls, 1948) _Yankee Doodle Dandy_ (Curtiz, 1942) _Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb_ (Kubrick, 1964) _2001: A Space Odyssey_ (Kubrick, 1968) Day Six _Eaux d'Artifice_ (Anger, 1953) _Meshes of the Afternoon_ (Deren, 1943) _Castro Street_ (Baille, 1966) _High School_ (Wiseman, 1968) Day Seven _Shane_ (Stevens, 1953) _The Searchers_ (Ford, 1956) _My Darling Clementine_ (Ford, 1946) Day Eight _Out of the Past_ (Tourneur, 1947) _Touch of Evil_ (Welles, 1958) _Night of the Hunter_ (Laughton, 1955) _Shadow of a Doubt_ (Hitchcock, 1943) Day Nine -- Closing Night & Celebration _Salt of the Earth_ (Biberman, 1954) _I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang_ (LeRoy, 1932) _Sunrise_ (Murnau, 1927) I trust I haven't bored everyone to death by now. Moreover, I know that the films selected for the tour are, from an academic standpoint, typical, not-so-exciting, lower division stuff. However, seeing these films on the big screen (especially the wide-screen black-and-white) with practically pristine prints, is a treat in and of itself. If the tour comes to a city near you, don't miss the rare opportunity to see some of these films as they were made to be seen. The URL for all of the Library of Congress film preservation material is: http://lcweb.loc.gov/film/ Cheers, Cynthia Cynthia Bussiere [log in to unmask] San Francisco, California ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.tcf.ua.edu/screensite