Silent Film Preservation Grant - Brief Article

Afterimage, Sept, 1999

The National Film Preservation Foundation has received a federal grant of $1 million for the preservation of specific silent films to be distributed to three institutions: the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, NY (which houses the only permanent school of film preservation [see Afterimage 24, no. 6]); the Museum of Modern Art in New York City; and the University of California, Los Angeles, Film and Television Archive. These archives will produce new masters and exhibition prints of 67 shorts, serials and feature films produced from 1895 to 1928.

According to the George Eastman House, less than 20 percent of films produced during the silent era have survived. These films were printed on highly flammable silver nitrate film stock and many were neglected after the arrival of sound film in 1928. It is estimated that one-hall of the silent film titles in these institutions archives need preservation work--at costs sometimes in excess of $40,000 each--in order to be screened. Works to be preserved include 20 short fictional films by Thomas Edison; three films by director/producer Thomas H. Ince; three one-reel comedies by Harold Lloyd; War on the Plains (1912), the first Western; and films starring actors John Barrymore, Clara Bow, Lon Chaney and Douglas Fairbanks.

The film preservation program, entitled "Saving the Silents," is part of Save America's Treasures, a national initiative designated for the preservation of historic sites and collections of cultural significance. The program has distributed a total of $30 million for 1999. Also among the 62 projects funded by Save America's Treasures are the preservation of the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. and Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater in Bear Run, Pennsylvania.