Treasures From American Film Archives (1893-1985)

Impresionante colección de más de 50 filmes y 11 horas de duración, restaurados y preservados meticulosamente por 18 de los Archivos más importantes de los Estados Unidos: Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, the Museum of Modern Art, George Eastman House, UCLA, y la Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, entre otros. Producido por la National Film Preservation Foundation, muestra la increíble variedad de filmes hechos de costa a costa durante los últimos 100 años. Narrado por Laurence Fishburne, es una cápsula del tiempo del siglo XX.

Disc 1

• The Original Movie (1922, 8 min.), Moviemaking in the Stone Age, told in silhouette animation.
• Early films from the Edison Company (1893–1906, 3 min.)
  • Blacksmithing Scene (1893, 1 min.), the first commercially shown U.S. film
  • The Gay Shoe Clerk (1903, ? min.)
  • Three American Beauties (1906, ? min.)
• Princess Nicotine; or, the Smoke Fairy (1909, 5 min.), Special effects fantasy on the perils of smoking by J. Stuart Blackton
• The Confederate Ironclad (1912, 16 min.), Civil War adventure with original music score
• Hell's Hinges (1916, 64 min.), a tinted restoration of the William S. Hart western
• The Fall of the House of Usher (1928, 13 min.), An avant-garde retelling of the Poe tale
• From Groucho Marx's home movies (ca. 1933, 2 min.)
• Running Around San Francisco for an Education (1938, 2 min.), Election ad for a school bond issue
• From Tevye (1939, 17 min.), Excerpt from the Yiddish-language classic
• Cologne: From the Diary of Ray and Esther (1939, 14 min.), Portrait of small-town America made by the local doctor and his wife
• Private Snafu: "Spies" (1943, 4 min.), Irreverent Chuck Jones cartoon for servicemen, written by Dr. Seuss
• OffOn (1968, 9 min.), Psychedelic landmark by Scott Bartlett

Disc 2

• Paper Print Copyright Deposits (7 min.)
  • Star Theatre (1901)
  • Move On (1903)
  • Dog Factory (1904)
• The Lonedale Operator (1911, 17 min.), D.W. Griffith's race-to-the-rescue melodrama
• Her Crowning Glory (1911, 14 min.), Domestic comedy with John Bunny and Flora Finch, from Vitagraph Studios
• The Toll of the Sea (1922, 54 min.), an early 2-color Technicolor feature starring Anna May Wong, script by Frances Marion
• From Accuracy First (c. 1928, 5 min.), Western Union employee training film
• From West Virginia documentaries
  • West Virginia, the State Beautiful (1929, 8 min.), Amateur travelogue by Rev. Ottis Rymer Snodgrass
  • One-Room Schoolhouses (c. 1935, 1 min.), footage of one-room Barbour County schoolhouses
• From Early Amateur Sound Film (1936–37, 4 min.), By home movie enthusiast Archie Stewart
• Composition 1 (Themis) (1940, 4 min.), Stop-motion animation by Dwinell Grant
• The Battle of San Pietro (1945, 33 min.), John Huston’s stunning combat documentary
• Negro Leagues Baseball (1946, 8 min.), Footage of “Goose” Tatum and other greats
• Battery Film (1985, 9 min.), Experimental blend of documentary and animation by Richard Protovin and Franklin Backus

Disc 3

• The Thieving Hand (1908, 5 min.), comic fable told through stop-motion animation and special effects
• White Fawn’s Devotion (1910, 11 min.), western by James Young Deer, the first Native American director
• The Chechahcos (1924, 86 min.), Klondike gold rush adventure, the first feature filmed entirely on location in Alaska
• From Japanese American Communities (1927–32, 7 min.), home movies by a Buddhist priest.
• From Rare Aviation Films (1928–36, 13 min.)
  • The Keystone “Patrician” (1928, 6 min.), Promotional film for a new plane
  • The Zeppelin “Hindenburg” (1936, 7 min.), home movies on board the LZ 129 Hindenburg
• We Work Again (1937, 15 min.), WPA documentary; includes 4 minutes of the only film of Orson Welles's legendary 1936 “Voodoo” Macbeth
• From La Valse (1951, 6 min.), George Balanchine’s choreography
• The Wall (1962, 10 min.). USIA documentary on the Berlin Wall
• George Dumpson’s Place (1965, 8 min.), Ed Emshwiller’s portrait of the folk artist and his world of found objects