NFPF News

Orphan Film Spotlight—Blackie the Wonder Horse Swims the Golden Gate (1938)

Blackie arrives in San Francisco after a pleasant swim.

The mission of the NFPF is to save and make accessible “orphan films.” These are movies unprotected by commercial interests, including documentaries, silent films, newsreels, home movies, avant-garde works, industrial films, and independent productions. “Orphan Film Spotlight” is a new regular feature of our blog and will highlight orphans preserved through our grant programs that are viewable online. Our inaugural selection has an unusual premise and unforgettable title: Blackie the Wonder Horse Swims the Golden Gate.

The story behind the film begins and ends at Roberts-at-the-Beach, a San Francisco restaurant owned by Richard “Shorty” Roberts. One day Shorty was arguing with Bill Kyne, owner of the famed Bay Meadows Racetrack, about whether horses could swim. Shorty claimed Blackie, his 12 year old … Read more

The Reel Thing Salutes The Film Foundation

From August 20 to 22, Los Angeles will host the Reel Thing Technical Symposium, an annual set of presentations about technological advances in film preservation. Organized by Grover Crisp and Michael Friend, this year’s edition features a 25th Anniversary tribute to The Film Foundation, which has helped restore nearly 700 films since its creation 1990, including classics such as Night of the Hunter, A Woman Under the Influence, Leave Her to Heaven, and Rebel Without a Cause. It also offers the free educational curriculum, The Story of Movies, which has taught over 10 million young people about film and its history.

TFF is one of the National Film Preservation Foundation’s staunchest supporters and makes possible our Avant-Garde Masters grant program, which turns 13 this year. We salute TFF’s quarter century mark and look forward to seeing what it will do in the decades ahead. The Reel Thing will … Read more

"Movies of Local People"—the H. Lee Waters Collection goes online

Movies of Local People: Spindale (1937)

This week we’d like to direct your attention to a captivating set of movies: Duke University’s H. Lee Waters Film Collection, which consists of 92 town portraits available for online viewing.

Between 1936 and 1942 itinerant filmmaker H. Lee Waters (1902-97) filmed more than 118 small communities in the Carolinas, Virginia, and Tennessee for his series Movies of Local People. By collaborating with local movie theaters to screen his films, he allowed everyday people to see themselves on the big screen. One of the highlights of the 252-film series, Kannapolis (1940–41), was placed on the National Film Registry in 2004.

These invaluable documentaries sprang from a canny commercial sense. As Waters explained, “with the Depression and hard times, people couldn’t justify spending much money, but to be able to see themselves on the same … Read more

Archive Spotlight: Chicago Film Archives

Lord Thing (1970) by DeWitt Beall, courtesy Chicago Film Archives.

One of the things we hope to do regularly on this blog is bring attention to some of the work being done by the organizations who participate in our preservation program.

The Chicago Film Archives is a great example of what a small-scale organization can accomplish through determination and ingenuity. Established in 2003 by Executive Director Nancy Watrous as a repository for the 5,000-item film collection that was being disposed of by the Chicago Public Library, the CFA has rapidly grown into an important regional archive holding more than 20,000 films, the earliest of which—A Pictorial Story of Hiawatha—dates back to 1903.

In 2005, the CFA was awarded its first grant from the NFPF to preserve Fairy Princess (1956), a short film by amateur moviemaker Margaret Conneely that was named one of the Photographic Society of America’s … Read more

Happy Independence Day!

U.S. Navy of 1915 (1915).

We’re celebrating the Fourth of July by marking the centenary of an indubitably American film, U.S. Navy of 1915. Its close-hand observations of sailors training and working aboard vintage ships have only grown more captivating and unique with age, making it the most popular film on the NFPF website by far. Nearly 250,000 viewers have streamed this fascinating glimpse of our military heritage.

This 11-minute fragment represents all that survives from what was a three reel documentary by showman Lyman Howe, whose Famous Ride on a Runaway Train (1921) appears on our DVD Lost and Found: American Treasures from the New Zealand Film Archive. Few of his other films survive, and even U.S. Navy was considered lost until this portion of the film was discovered during the NFPF’s partnership with the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia in 2008. If you haven’t already watched it, please … Read more