Librarian of Congress James H. Billington announced in December 2002 his annual selection of 25 motion pictures to be added to the National Film Registry (see sidebar). This group of titles brings the total number of films placed on the registry since 1989 to 350.
The lobby card for "From Here to Eternity," one of the classics chosen for this year's National Film Registry, featured its stars and the prelude to the famous kiss on the beach between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr.
Under the terms of the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, each year the Librarian names 25 "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" motion pictures to the registry. The list is designed to reflect the full breadth and diversity of America's film heritage, thus increasing public awareness of the richness of American cinema and the need for its preservation. As Billington said in making the announcement: "Our film heritage is America's living past. It celebrates the creativity and inventiveness of diverse communities and our nation as a whole. By preserving American films, we safeguard a significant element of our cultural history.
"The films we choose are not necessarily either the ‘best' American films ever made or the most famous," Billington added. "But they are films that continue to have cultural, historical or aesthetic significance—and, in many cases, represent countless other films also deserving of recognition. The selection of a film, I stress, is not an endorsement of its ideology or content, but rather a recognition of the film's importance to American film and cultural history and to history in general."
This year's selections span the 20th century from 1901 to 1991 and encompass films ranging from Hollywood classics to lesser-known, but still vital, works. Films named this year include: "Alien," "The Bad and the Beautiful," "The Black Stallion," "From Stump to Ship," "Fuji," "The Pearl," "This is Cinerama," "This is Spinal Tap" and "Through Navajo Eyes."
Following intensive discussions with the National Film Preservation Board, Billington chose this year's titles after evaluating nearly 1,000 films nominated by the public. He also consulted with the members of his advisory board on registry film selection and national film preservation policy, along with the Library's own Motion Picture Division staff.
"Taken together, the 350 films in the National Film Registry represent a stunning range of American filmmaking—including Hollywood features, documentaries, avant-garde and amateur productions, films of regional interest, ethnic, animated, and short film subjects—all deserving recognition, preservation and access by future generations. As we begin this new millennium, the registry stands among the finest summations of American cinema's wondrous first century," Billington said.
This key component of American cultural history, however, remains a legacy with much already lost or in peril. As Billington observed: "In spite of the heroic efforts of archives, the motion picture industry and others, America's film heritage, by any measure, is an endangered species. Fifty percent of the films produced before 1950, and 80 to 90 percent made before 1920, have disappeared forever. Sadly, our enthusiasm for watching films has proved far greater than our commitment to preserving them. And, ominously, more films are lost each year—through the ravages of nitrate deterioration, color-fading and the recently discovered ‘vinegar syndrome,' which threatens the acetate-based [safety] film stock on which the vast majority of motion pictures, past and present, have been reproduced."
Billington lauded recent landmark developments in the film preservation field, including the continuing development of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Va., which is being built with generous support from the Packard Humanities Institute and is scheduled to open in 2005; and the Moving Image Collections (MIC), a joint project of the Library of Congress, the Association of Moving Image Archivists, Rutgers University, Georgia Tech, the University of Washington and many other institutions.
The MIC recently received a $900,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to begin creation of the nation's first online integrated catalog of moving images, a Web-based gateway to invaluable films held at archives throughout the world. Noted film critic and historian Leonard Maltin, who is also an at-large alternate member of the National Film Preservation Board, recently remarked: "Film researchers, archivists and buffs around the world have been eagerly awaiting the day when one could determine, easily and definitively, which films exist and where. It's high time for this project to come to fruition."
For each title named to the registry, the Library of Congress works to ensure that the film is preserved for all time, either through the Library's massive motion picture preservation program or through collaborative ventures with other archives, motion picture studios, and independent filmmakers. The Library of Congress contains the largest collections of film and television in the world, from the earliest surviving copyrighted motion picture to the latest feature releases. For more information, visit the National Film Preservation Board Web site at www.loc.gov/film.
