posted 12-27-2005 03:39 PM                    

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Announced by the Library of Congress on 12/27/05:

FILMS SELECTED TO

Baby Face (1933)
Smart and sultry Barbara Stanwyck uses her feminine wiles to scale the corporate ladder, amassing male admirers who are only too willing to help a poor working girl. One of the more notorious melodramas of the pre?Code era, a period when the movie industry relaxed its censorship standards. This relative freedom resulted in a cycle of gritty, audacious films that resonated with Depression?battered audiences. Films such as Baby Face led to the imposition of the Production Code in 1934.

The Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act of Man (1975)
This powerful documentary by the Kentucky-based arts and education center Appalshop represents the finest in regional film-making, providing important understanding of the environmental and cultural history of the Appalachian region. The 1972 Buffalo Creek Flood Disaster, caused by the failure of a coal-waste dam, killed more than 100 people and left thousands in West Virginia homeless. Local citizens invited Appalshop to come to the area and make a film of the historical record, fearing that the Pittston Coal Company's powerful influence in the state would lead to a whitewash investigation and absolve it of any corporate culpability (indeed the Company maintained the flood was simply "an Act of God"). Newsweek hailed the film as "a devastating expose of the collusion between state officials and coal executives."

The Cameraman (1928)
This film sadly marked the last of Buster Keaton's sublime comedy classics. Here Keaton is an aspiring newsreel cameraman out to win the heart of Marceline Day. A seamless, ingenious blend of comedy and pathos, featuring countless creative sight gags involving battleships, Charles Lindbergh, admirals and hotel doormen.

Commandment Keeper Church, Beaufort South Carolina, May 1940 (1940)
A set of field recordings made by a pioneering ethnographic film team led by acclaimed author (and innovative anthropologist/folklorist) Zora Neale Hurston, Jane Belo and others. Amazing footage, especially worthy of recognition since synchronous sound recordings were made, capturing singing, instrumental music, sermons, and religious services among this South Carolina Gullah community. These audio recordings have recently been rediscovered and are being reunited with the film footage.

Cool Hand Luke (1967)
Paul Newman in a classic loner, anti-hero role of the chain-gang prisoner who refuses to give in to the attempts of guards to crack him: "What we've got here is a failure to communicate." The legendary egg-eating scene is certain to raise cholesterol levels in any viewer.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
Considered by many as arguably the finest teen comedy of recent decades, this Amy Heckerling 1980s cultural film icon combines a tender, compassionate treatment of adolescence with hilarious performances. The script was based on 22-year old Rolling Stone writer (and later film director) Cameron Crowe's spending nine months undercover as a student at Redondo Beach's Ridgemont High School (As Crowe noted wittily: "I dated lightly during that time. My agent told me there was a morals clause in my contract and I believed him.") The cast contains an appealing mix of soon-to-be-famous young talent (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold) spending serious time at the Mall ("You're the one who told me I was going to get a boyfriend at the Mall.") and working in fast-food restaurants ("I shall serve no fries before their time.") Most memorable is Sean Penn who steals the show as the spaced-out, ultimate surfer-dude Jeff Spicoli ("This is U.S. History, I see the Globe right there.")

The French Connection (1971)
Maverick cop thriller which reinvented car chases and the way to shoot New York City (cinematography by Owen Roizman). Features gripping action scenes and a career-making performance from intense, bend-the-rules-when-necessary cop Gene Hackman as Popeye Doyle.

Giant (1956)
A monumental "event" film, from the era when Hollywood made truly "BIG" pictures. George Stevens, Jr. and a memorable cast (Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean) bring Edna Ferber's epic sprawling novel of the Texas plains to life with panoramic visual style and memorable small touches. Over 3 hours long, but one of the top films from the 1950s and a breathtaking example of the American film as spectacle.

H2O (1929)
Renowned experimental film by Ralph Steiner, who later served as cameraman and/or director on documentary classics such as The City and The Plow that Broke the Plains. H2O is a cinematic tone poem to water in all its forms, using lovely images and editing techniques of movement, shading and texture to produce striking visual effects.

Hands Up (1926)
As a comic actor, Raymond Griffith was worlds away from the frantic, rubber-faced funnymen who stereotypically appeared in silent films. An easy elegance was his stock-in-trade: when Mr. Griffith performed a gag, he executed it with understatement and panache. In the Civil War saga Hands Up, Griffith is not only an amusingly intrepid Confederate spy, but also an endearing romantic figure with two young women vying for his attentions.

Hoop Dreams (1994)
This groundbreaking, multi-year account of two inner-city Chicago kids trying to win college basketball scholarships provides an intimate and comprehensive account of the life and limited options of lower class black families in America.

House of Usher (1960)
The talents of Vincent Price, writer Richard Matheson, director Roger Corman, and the legacy of Edgar Allan Poe combined in the first of American International Pictures's series of films that dominated horror on the screen in the 1960s. Despite shooting schedules that rarely ran more than three weeks or budgets over $500,000, the AIP Price-Corman-Matheson-Poe series offered elegant, literary adaptations and luminous decor and color photography that established a new standard for screen horror. Corman's prodigious output includes over 50 films directed and over 300 produced. His films helped launch the careers of a galaxy of Hollywood talent including Jack Nicholson, Robert DeNiro, Dennis Hopper, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard and James Cameron.

Imitation of Life (1934)
One of American cinema's most famous example of the "woman's picture," melodramas which focused on the emotions, problems and concerns of women. This John Stahl film adaptation of Fannie Hurst's novel has an innovative ahead of its time theme involving a white widow (Claudette Colbert) who starts a business partnership with her African-American maid (Louise Beavers), and is arguably the first Hollywood studio film to treat African-American characters in a dignified fashion with richly-developed roles, and not merely comics or entertainers.

Jeffries-Johnson World's Championship Boxing Contest (1910)
A signal moment in American race relations, this recording of the July 4th heavyweight title fight between champion Jack Johnson and former champion James J. Jeffries became the most widely discussed and written about motion picture made before 1915's The Birth of a Nation. Several of the leading American production-distribution companies (all MPPC members) pooled their resources to shoot the film for the one-off J. & J. Co.
An intense discourse on racial identity engulfed press coverage of "white hope" Jeffries's attempt to unseat the first African-American heavyweight champion. In A Hard Road to Glory: A History of African-American Athletes (1988), Arthur Ashe concurs with other historians that Johnson's defeat of Jeffries was, for black America, nothing less than the most important event since Emancipation. The feature-length motion-picture recording of Johnson's victory remained the subject of debate and press coverage for two years. The $100,000 production was widely exhibited internationally, but also often censored. Congress took up a bill to ban the traffic prizefight pictures in 1910, ultimately making it a federal crime from 1912 until 1940.

Making of an American (1920)
Produced by the State of Connecticut, this silent short is a sincere, dramatically effective public education film aimed at persuading immigrants to learn English. The drama's protagonist is an Italian laborer who attends night school and with his newly-acquired English skills obtains a better job. The film's intertitles address the audience in English, Italian and Polish.
Unlike so many artifacts from the post-WWI "Americanization" movement, this film avoids ugly stereotyping or xenophobic tone and a telling example both of regional film-making and the "sponsored film."

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Beloved, timeless fantasy classic of a man who goes to court to prove he is Santa Claus and keep the holiday from becoming too commercial.

Mom and Dad (1944)
The most successful exploitation film of all time, a low-budget but relentlessly promoted, socially significant film which amazingly finishing as the 3rd highest grossing film during the 1940s. Producer/promoter Kroger Babb made tens of millions of dollars with this $62,000 sex-hygiene exploitation film. He produced some 300 prints of this feature drama and roadshowed it for more than a decade, each print traveling with a lecturer (and two nurses) who promoted Mom and Dad's "educational" value, always a step ahead of the censors. Time Magazine dryly noted that Mom and Dad "left only the livestock unaware of the chance to learn the facts of life."

The Music Man (1962)
A touchstone film in the "Small Town America" film genre, this film adaptation of Meredith Willson's dramatic paean to Iowa and the Midwest is Americana at its finest. Con-man extraordinaire Harold Hill (Robert Preston) brings his revolutionary "think system" to the sleepy little town of River City, Iowa, and his charismatic magnetism to the attention of town misfit and repressed librarian Shirley Jones. Preston's pulsating energy and classic musical numbers ("Trouble," "76 Trombones,") make the film's charms well-nigh irresistible.

Power of the Press (1928)
Frank Capra made so many world?renowned classics in the sound era that we tend to overlook his impressive and fascinating work from the 1920s. This dexterous newspaper yarn features Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as a reporter investigating a murder. When he discovers rampant political chicanery afoot, what's a clever young Capra hero to do? Expose the corruption, of course, and set his hometown to rights.

A Raisin in the Sun (1961)
Model film adaptation of Lorraine Hansbury's classic play about a black lower middle class family. The legendary cast is a veritable who's who of the Civil Rights era: Sidney Poiter, Claudia McNeil and Ruby Dee.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
The penultimate "midnight movie," Rocky Horror revolutionized prevailing notions of audience participation during film screenings. Words to remember: "It's astounding, time is fleeting, madness takes its toll."

San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, April 18, 1906 (1906)
Documentary landmark with footage depicting one of the most horrific American natural disasters.

The Sting (1973)
Classic Newman and Redford con-game crime caper, which also sparked a national resurgence of interest in Scott Joplin's ragtime music used for the score ("The Entertainer," among other tunes). Brilliant, evocative recreation of Depression-era Chicago.

A Time for Burning (1966)
Hailed by Fred Friendly as "the best civil rights film ever made," this cinema verite documentary by Bill Jersey chronicles the ultimately unsuccessful attempts of a Nebraska Lutheran minister to integrate his church. Contains some of the best observational "fly on the wall" footage ever filmed, filled with incisive scenes showing people struggling with their prejudices, anger, disillusionment, changing social times and hopes for the future.

Toy Story (1995)
Changed animation's face and delivery system. The first full-length animated feature to be created entirely by artists using computer tools and technology. Andy's current toys have to learn to live with his new fave playmate, "to infinity and beyond," galactic superhero Buzz Lightyear.

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posted 12-29-2005 06:38 AM                       

quote: Leo Enticknap

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Point taken, but does Scotchgard/3M Photogard promote VS?

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posted 12-29-2005 10:34 AM                       

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(Editor.... the following is a quote of Ashwani K. Mehta, Business Manager of ScotchGuard Photo and Film Protectors as reported in the Big Reel 11-15-98)

"...the Image Permanence Institute of the Rochester Institute of Technology recently showed that the protectors do allow a film to breathe. They stated that the Photoguard film protector "does not seal the treated film. The acid generated in the film base as a result of chemical decay is able to diffuse from the degrading film even through the coating.".....If the treated film did not breathe, delamination would occur. However, no such delamination has occurred with the Photogard coating..... Our research shows that the original films coated 20 years ago, stored at room temperature, look as good as the day they were coated."

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posted 12-29-2005 10:51 AM                       

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Storage

Vinegar Syndrome
"Vinegar Syndrome" is a term used to describe the chemical reaction that goes on during the deterioration of cellulose triacetate film support. When cellulose triacetate begins to decompose, "deacetylation" occurs and the acetate ion reacts with moisture to form acetic acid producing a vinegar odor when a can is opened. Once the reaction is started, it cannot be stopped. —Information extracted from a paper that was presented at the 1992 AMIA Conference on December 10, 1992, by Dr. Tulsi Ram.


Molecular Sieve Acid Scavenger
Molecular Sieve is a promising new technology developed by Eastman Kodak Company that has the ability to retard the vinegar syndrome reaction. Simply stated, the inclusion of Molecular Sieve with processed motion picture film in a sealed container has the ability to extend the life of the dye images and film support beyond that which is currently considered normal.

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posted 12-30-2005 05:46 AM                       

quote: John Pytlak

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For these reasons, they are almost never used on camera original films or films intended as archival elements.

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There was a posting on the AMIA list some years ago from an Indian DoP who'd got a worn out, cut camera negative of a major Bollywood feature. Some 300 release prints had been struck directly from it without making any intermediate elements first ( ), and it had worn out. So he'd had it Scotchguarded, with the result that the next batch of prints weren't as sharp and saturated. What, he asked, could he do to rectify the situation? Short of finding one of the original prints that was still in a reasonable state and printing preservation elements from that, the consensus of the replies was 'not much'.

posted 12-30-2005 10:59 AM                       

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There was a posting on the AMIA list some years ago from an Indian DoP who'd got a worn out, cut camera negative of a major Bollywood feature. Some 300 release prints had been struck directly from it without making any intermediate elements first, and it had worn out.

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posted 12-31-2005 08:48 PM                       

quote: Carl Martin

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is it normal for a negative to be trashed after a mere 300 runs through a printer?

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