Among the more than 3 million motion pictures, videotapes, videodiscs and recordings in the Library's Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division (M/B/RS) are 100,000 reels of early nitrate films -- some of which may not now exist anywhere else in the world.
For years, the Library has been working to preserve and when possible restore many of these 35mm films which were made on highly flammable nitrate film stock. Last month, the Library and the Smithsonian Institution announced a joint effort to make a representative sample of these films available on videocassette for sale to the public.
"We're always looking for ways to make the Library's collections more accessible, not only to people who come here to do research, but to others throughout the world," said David Francis, chief of M/B/RS.
"We're delighted to work with the Smithsonian Institution in releasing these rare and historical films to the public," added Dina Fleming, public services coordinator for M/B/RS and production coordinator for the project. "The Smithsonian's well- established marketing networks and its willingness to fund the production of these videos made it possible for us to complete this project. I hope we'll be able to work together on similar projects in the future."
Andrew Ferguson, director of Smithsonian Video, agreed. "I've enjoyed working with the Library of Congress on this project and I hope the collaboration will continue. Both institutions are dedicated to ensuring a diffusion of knowledge and what better way to accomplish that than to share material from the Library's collections with the public? We hope to distribute additional films and perhaps selections from the Library's music collection as well."
During an evening reception in the Library's Mary Pickford Theater, Constance Newman, under secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, explained the importance of the rare, historical films featured in the new Library of Congress Video Collection.
"Since taxpayers support the Smithsonian Institution's and the Library's collections and research, ideally they -- the taxpayers -- should be able to benefit directly from the holdings of the institutions and from the expertise of their staffs. The films that these videos reproduce are a prime example of fragile items that would suffer from public exposure. It is encouraging," she added, "that, in an era of constrained budgets, the Library and the Smithsonian accomplished this collaboration in researching, assembling and packaging the Library of Congress Video Collection with existing staff, existing offices and existing programs."
Prior to a screening of brief excerpts from the films, Dr. Billington, stressed the significance of this project:
"Until the electronic superhighway becomes a reality, we still have to make our collections available in what is now considered a traditional form -- the videocassette. The Smithsonian has access to the arts community throughout the nation and can, therefore, ensure that these important films, which have not been previously available, will obtain a wide distribution. We are also grateful to the Smithsonian for sharing with us the financial risks involved in this venture."
Later, David Francis, chief of M/B/RS, described some of the research and expert consultation the division conducted in preparing the six-volume set for release. "We first came up with the idea of distributing some of these films on video in 1991," he recalled. "We asked Janet Staiger, chairman of the Society for Cinema Studies, for advice on what categories the society -- which includes film teachers and historians -- believe are underrepresented. The respondents asked us to include films by African American directors, by women directors and those that show the development of early cinema."
Scott Simmon, formerly curator of the Library's Mary Pickford Theater, now a professor of film studies at San Francisco State University, selected films for each category based on their suitability, completeness and visual quality. He also wrote the notes that describe each film and checked each tape to ensure satisfactory transfer. The collection, which is being released on six cassettes features the following films:
Vol. 1, The African American Cinema I, presents Oscar Micheaux's "Within Our Gates" (1919), his second film (following "The Homesteader"). The earliest surviving feature directed by an African American, it uses a multi-race cast that, as Mr. Simmon explained in the accompanying liner notes, "allowed for engagement with issues beyond the scope both of all black 'race movies' and of Hollywood studio productions."
The film follows Sylvia Landry, who attempts to raise money to keep a Southern school for black children from closing while concealing a scarred personal history and fending off aggressive suitors. "As in Micheaux's novels, the film is structured through now-disconcerting flashbacks, digressions and cutaways to distant stories, but the film is completely coherent on its own distinctive terms," Mr. Simmon wrote.
"Its long backstory of Sylvia's youth, with the lynchings and attempted white-on-black rape, seems a historically valid response, in both content and intercut style, to D.W. Griffith's racist landmark, 'The Birth of a Nation' (1915)."
Vol. 2, Origins of the Gangster Film, features two films; the first is D.W. Griffith's "The Narrow Road" (1912), an obscure one-reel film that precedes his "Musketeers of Pig Alley," which is often referred to as the "first" gangster film.
"The Narrow Road" portrays a police detective's pursuit of a redeemable criminal whose faithful wife is played by Mary Pickford (not identified in the film credits).
Also in Volume 2 is "Alias Jimmy Valentine," a five-reel feature directed by Maurice Tourneur, who brought his experience as a former book illustrator and sculptor's assistant to the film, which features "deep" staging of the action and unusual camera angles, including overhead views of a bank robbery.
Unlike "The Narrow Road," this film, Mr. Simmon wrote, "is less a story of city streets than of small, sophisticated gangs -- safecrackers in the Tourneur [film], counterfeiters in the Griffith. Our heroes are criminals before we meet them, and their stories reflect both gangster-film conventions and a popular cycle of prison movies." Robert Warwick, a Broadway idol and Hollywood character actor in the 1950s, stars in the film, which was lost for 75 years before Australia's National Film and Sound Archive repatriated the single surviving print to the Library of Congress in 1989.
Vol. 3, Origins of American Animation, 1900-1921, presents a collection of 21 short cartoons, featuring George Herriman's "Krazy Kat," "The Katzenjammer Kids" and surviving fragments from "Gertie on Tour" and "The Centaurs" by Winsor McKay. The earliest short film, "The Enchanted Drawing" (1900), is not animated but offers insight into how this art was developed.
J. Stuart Blackton, at the time a cartoonist for the New York Evening World is photographed in Thomas Edison's "Black Maria" studio performing a vaudeville routine called "the lightning sketch," supplemented by stop-camera tricks that bring the drawn objects to life.
Vol. 4, Origins of the Fantasy Feature, presents two rare features from 1914. The first is "The Patchwork Girl of Oz," written and produced by L. Frank Baum, author of the first 14 Oz novels. The cast includes Pierre Couderc, a 17-year-old French boy in the title role, while Violet MacMillan, who had played Dorothy in a stage musical version of The Wizard of Oz, plays a young munchkin boy.
The second is "A Florida Enchantment," directed by Sidney Drew. It is based on an 1891 novel and 1896 play of the same title. The action centers on a woman who finds magic seeds that can change women into men and men into women without drastically changing their appearance. Although the acting is "superb," Mr. Simmon said that "the casting is unfortunately more typical of the era in filling African American roles with whites in blackface and in resorting to slapstick comedy among the black characters."
Vol. 5, The African American Cinema II, presents "The Scar of Shame" (1926), a rare surviving silent example of what the film industry once labeled "race movies," regional, low-budget films made for African American audiences and often featuring all-black casts. Though a melodrama of dance halls and gunfights, the film depicts poverty, ambition and prejudice within the black community in ways otherwise unseen in silent film.
In his description of the film, Mr. Simmon wrote, "The Scar of Shame" managed to describe, through the heightened disguise of melodrama, something authentic about African American experience in the 1920s. Taken literally, the plot is full of contrivance and wild coincidence, but it also conveys something of the difficulties of escape from the ghetto.
"The film's melodramatic conflict between the ghetto streets and the black upper classes is generally free of coding by dark and light skin color (as so often it is not in Micheaux). And the preachy discussion of 'environment' in the well-designed art intertitles may also be progressive, a denial of determinism by racial genetics."
The film is preceded by a three-minute short of pianist Eubie Blake (1883-1983) and 12-year partner, singer Noble Sissle, who perform their 1918 composition, "Affectionate Dan," and a jazzed-up spiritual.
Vol. 6, America's First Women Filmmakers, presents four complete works from the silent era's two most accomplished and successful women directors. Alice Guy-Blache (1875-1968) was probably the first person to direct a narrative film; her first may have been "La Fee aux Choux" ("The Cabbage Fairy").
From 1910 until 1914, she produced and supervised more than 300 one- and two-reel films, directing about 50 of them. Her one-reel "Matrimony's Speed Limit" (1913), about a businessman who thinks he must marry before noon to inherit a fortune, and "A House Divided" (1913), about an estranged couple's legal agreement to "live separately together," were chosen from Guy- Blache's vast repertoire.
Two works by Lois Weber (1882-1939), a well known writer and one of the highest paid directors in Hollywood at the time, are also included in this volume. Known for her films that explored family behavior, she also directed the 1916 "Where Are my Children?," a complex tale about abortion. Weber's "How Men Propose" (1913) portrays a woman who, according to Mr. Simmon, conducts "dispassionate research for her article about male courtship rituals," while the 1921 "Too Wise Wives" offers contrasting views, through the portrayal of two families, one rich, the other richer, of the roles wives should play.
"Both Alice Guy-Blache and Lois Weber have been badly neglected by film historians, but that is partially because their films have been so difficult to see," Mr. Simmon concluded. "Most are now lost (including all of Guy-Blach‚'s feature-length films), and those few that have survived have been generally unavailable on video."
Preservation. The Library of Congress preserved the films at its Motion Picture Conservation Center in Dayton, Ohio, and then transferred them to a digital tape master. Piano scores, composed and performed by Philip Carli, a graduate student at the University of Rochester and pianist at the George Eastman House, has been added to each film. In a collaborative effort, the Smithsonian Institution agreed to fund the project's production costs by purchasing the six-volume sets and paying a modest licensing fee. Smithsonian Video, a division of Smithsonian Institution Press, will release the videos through retail outlets, direct mail and its sales shops. They will also be sold in the Library Madison Building Sales Shop. Negotiations are under way to make the films themselves available for rent through the Museum of Modern Art Circulating Film Library.
Robert McC. Adams, secretary of the Smithsonian, welcomed the project. "It represents a convergence of the interests and objectives of the two institutions," he said. "The enriched understanding of lost early stages in the development of the motion-picture art and industry that these videocassettes will make widely available should be a significant contribution to popular culture."
This project is one of many steps the Library is taking to promote the importance of film preservation. The National Film Preservation Act of 1992 (Public Law 102-307) directs the Librarian to analyze the current state of American film preservation and develop a coordinated national program. While reflecting on the various stages involved in restoring and preparing these films for transfer to VHS format, Mr. Francis recalled the challenges division staffers encountered in restoring these rare and imperfectly preserved treasures.
He offered as an example "Within Our Gates," a copy of which Tom Cripps, a leading expert on black cinema, found in the late 1970s at Filmoteca Espa¤ola, Spain's national film archives. Called "La Negra" ("The Black Woman"), the film's original English titles had been replaced by interpretive Spanish titles. In 1989 the National Center for Film and Video Preservation at the American Film Institute arranged to have the Filmoteca Española make a safety-film preservation copy of "La Negra" for deposit at the Library of Congress.
"We were delighted to receive this version of the film -- from possibly the only copy that still exists," recalled Mr. Francis. "Unfortunately, the Spanish titles did not translate Micheaux's original text, but were written to explain the action to the audience. Scott Simmon did extensive research and rewrote the titles in an effort to recapture the flavor of the original version. He read several of Micheaux's books and viewed his other films and then translated the Spanish titles, changing them when necessary to fit the director's style and the content of the movie itself."
"We also spent a great deal of time preserving and restoring these films," Mr. Francis added. "It's taken many months of hard work, but we're proud to be able to make them available to the public both on video and later in film.
The Library of Congress Video Collection is available for $34.95 per cassette in the Library's Sales Shop and in Smithsonian museum shops and other retail outlets throughout the country. The videos are also available through the American International Distribution Corp. Shipping and handling is $3.50. For additional sales information, call (800) 669-1559 or write Smithsonian Video, 64 Depot Road, Colchester, VT 05446.
