From a film of a 19th century boxing match to an epic showdown inside cyberspace, the films named to the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry once again cover a wide range of the American experience.

The titles added today range from blockbusters like The Matrix to popular comedies like A League Of Their Own to classics like Sons Of The Desert, Dirty Harry, Breakfast At Tiffany’s and the western 3:10 To Yuma. Of historical importance are the films The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Title Fight (1897) which featured a boxing prize fight filmed in Carson City, Nevada and Kodachrome Color Motion Picture Tests from 1922. Also on the list is the more experimental Hours For Jerome from director Nathaniel Dorsky.

Other films named to the list include The Middleton Family At The New York World’s Fair, a 1939 short film produced by the Westinghouse company for their World Fair pavilion. Produced and directed by Melton Barker, The Kidnappers Foil was a series of short films shot in various small towns throughout the country using the same script and local actors. Many of these have been lost, though some still exist in local in vintage movie houses or historical societies.

The complete list is below. Those marked with an asterisk are available to view at the bottom of the post.

The National Film Preservation Act, passed in 1988 by the Library of Congress, established the National Film Preservation Board. Under the terms of the National Film Preservation Act, the Librarian of Congress is tasked with choosing 25 “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant films to be added to the National Film Registry each year. Started in 1989, the titles announced today bring the total number of films on the Registry to 600. This year’s films were selected from a list of nearly 1,000 titles. Once films are named to the Registry, the Library of Congress works to ensure that the film is preserved under the terms of the Preservation Act, whether through the Library’s own film preservation program or in collaboration with other archives or film studios.

The films on the Registry range from silent classics Intolerance (1919) and It (1927) to popular blockbusters like Star Wars (1977) and Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981) to historically important film footage such as the Hindenburg Disaster Newsreel Footage (1937) and Abraham Zapruder’s infamous home movie footage of the John F. Kennedy assassination.

The complete list of films named to the National Film Registry this year -

• 3:10 To Yuma (1957)
• Anatomy Of A Murder (1959)
• The Augustas (1930s-1950s)
• Born Yesterday (1950)
• Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1961)
• A Christmas Story (1983)
• The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Title Fight (1897)*
• Dirty Harry (1971)
• Hours For Jerome: Parts 1 And 2 (1980-82)
• The Kidnappers Foil (1930s-1950s)*
• Kodachrome Color Motion Picture Tests (1922)*
• A League Of Their Own (1992)
• The Matrix (1999)
• The Middleton Family At The New York World’s Fair (1939)*
• One Survivor Remembers (1995)
• Parable (1964)
• Samsara: Death And Rebirth In Cambodia (1990)
• Slacker (1991)
• Sons Of The Desert (1933)
• The Spook Who Sat By The Door (1973)
• They Call It Pro Football (1967)
• The Times Of Harvey Milk (1984)
• Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1914)*
• The Wishing Ring; An Idyll Of Old England (1914)

With titles stretching across American cinema history from the silent comedy short A Cure For Pokeritis (1912) to Forrest Gump (1994), the Library of Congress announced the 25 titles to be added to the National Film Registry today.

The list of 25 films has been released annually since 1989 and is composed of 25 films selected from nominations received by the general public. The aim of the registry is to preserve American films of artistic, cultural or historic significance. This year 2,228 films were nominated. Copies of each film named to the Registry will be stored at the Library of Congress’ cold-storage vaults at the Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center near Culpeper, Va. This year’s group of 25 films brings the number of films in the registry to 575.

As always, the titles cover a wide range of topics and comprise not only of popular movies of their day and features we now consider classic, but also lesser known works that nevertheless hold some importance culturally with classics like Charlie Chaplin’s first full-length feature silent comedy The Kid and the 1945 drama The Lost Weekend sharing space with experimental films such as Jordan Belson’s five minute short Allures (1961).

The addition I am most excited by is The Nicholas Brothers Family Home Movies. The Nicholas Brothers were one of the greatest dance teams during the Golden Age of Hollywood – a great example of their work can be found in 1943′s Stormy Weather – and the footage that they shot over 20 or so years includes the only footage shot inside the Cotton Club and of famous Broadway shows like Babes in Arms as well as home movies of an all African-American regiment during World War II and films of street life in Harlem in the 1930s.

Interestingly, there are some echoes across the centuries among the titles. The 1912 documentary The Cry Of The Children has been credited with helping the pre-World War One child labor reform movement while 1979′s Norma Rae was a dramatization of another labor-related struggle. Walt Disney’s Bambi, a classic of hand-drawn animation shares space on the list with one of the first computer animation test pieces, 1972′s A Computer Animated Hand.

The complete list of titles that were named is as follows-

A Cure for Pokeritis (1912)
The Cry of the Children (1912)
The Kid (1921)
The Iron Horse (1924)
Twentieth Century (1934)
Nicholas Brothers Family Home Movies (1930s-40s)
Bambi (1942)
The Negro Soldier (1944)
The Lost Weekend (1945)
The War of the Worlds (1953)
The Big Heat (1953)
Porgy and Bess (1959)
Allures (1961)
Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (1963)
Faces (1968)
Growing Up Female (1971)
A Computer Animated Hand (1972)
Hester Street (1975)
I, An Actress (1977)
Norma Rae (1979)
Fake Fruit Factory (1986)
Stand and Deliver (1988)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
El Mariachi (1992)
Forrest Gump (1994)

The villainous Darth Vader revealing that he is the father of heroic Luke Skywalker, Jason Miller casting out the devil from young Linda Blair and a documentary on psychological trauma amongst World War Two combat vets are all celluloid moments that will be preserved by the Library of Congress on the National Film Registry. This morning Librarian of Congress James H. Billington announced that The Empire Strikes Back, The Exorcist and the documentary Let There Be Light are just three of the 25 titles named to the National Film registry this year.

This year’s list covers over a century of cinema from Newark Athlete, an experimental 1891 short film of a New Jersey teenager swinging Indian clubs shot at Edison Laboratory in East Orange, NJ to Study Of A River, a 1996 experimental film about the Hudson River from director Peter B. Hutton. Newark Athlete is also the Registry’s earliest film.

The complete list of films named to the Registry can be found below.

The list of 25 films has been released annually since 1989 and is composed of 25 films selected by Billington from nominations received by the general public. The aim of the registry is to preserve American films of artistic, cultural or historic significance. This year over 2,100 films were nominated.

“The most interesting thing for me is not seeing something I like make the list, but getting educated by the list that comes out of this process,” Billington stated in a press release.

Copies of each film named to the Registry will be stored at the Library of Congress’ cold-storage vaults at the Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center near Culpeper, Va.

This year, the cinema of the 1970s seemed to dominate the list with five films – Robert Altman’s revisionist western McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), William Friedkin’s horror classic The Exorcist (1973), Alan Pakula’s docudrama adaptation of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s book All The President’s Men (1976), the documentary Grey Gardens (1976) and the smash hit disco musical Saturday Night Fever (1977).

The Empire Strikes Back (1980), directed by Irvin Kershner, joins its predecessor Star Wars, which was named to the list during its inaugural year. Empire Strikes Back is also only the third sequel to be named to the Registry joining The Bride Of Frankenstein and The Godfather Part II. Empire also marks the fourth film from George Lucas to make the list, who also landed on the Registry this year with his student short Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB. Previously his features American Graffiti and Star Wars have been placed on the Registry.

Houston’s documentary Let There Be Light was suppressed by the Pentagon for 35 years due to concerns over its unflinching depiction of the mental trauma many World War two combat veterans experienced after returning home.

In a sad irony, three of the films named this year had links to prominent cast and crew who have died in recent months. The Empire Strikes Back director Kershner passed away on November 29th, while Leslie Nielson, whose career was reinvented by his role in the comedy Airplane!, died on November 28. The Pink Panther helmer Blake Edwards passed on December 15.

The 25 films named to the National Film Registry are-

Airplane! (1980)
All the President’s Men (1976)
The Bargain (1914)
Cry of Jazz (1959)
Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB (1967)
The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
The Exorcist (1973)
The Front Page (1931)
Grey Gardens (1976)
I Am Joaquin (1969)
It’s a Gift (1934)
Let There Be Light (1946)
Lonesome (1928)
Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)
Malcolm X (1992)
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)
Newark Athlete (1891)
Our Lady of the Sphere (1969)
The Pink Panther (1964)
Preservation of the Sign Language (1913)
Saturday Night Fever (1977)
Study of a River (1996)
Tarantella (1940)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)
A Trip Down Market Street (1906)

Late last week, the National Film Preservation Board made their annual announcement of the 25 new “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant films they will be adding to the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry. As always, the list is an interesting cross-section of films from the silent era to more modern fare. From the classic Tyrone Power swashbuckler The Mark Of Zorro to The Muppet Movie, from the melodrama of William Wyler’s Jezebel to the pioneering short film/long-form music video Thriller, the Library of Congress moves to preserve the films named as part of the country’s cultural heritage.

After the list, we’ve embedded the short films that made this year’s list-

Dog Day Afternoon, Dir. Sidney Lumet (1975)
The Exiles, Dir. Kent MacKenzie (1961)
Heroes All, Dir. Anthony Young (1920)
Hot Dogs for Gauguin, Dir. Martin Brest (1972)
The Incredible Shrinking Man, Dir. Jack Arnold (1957)
Jezebel, Dir. William Wyler (1938)
The Jungle, Dir. Charlie “Brown” Davis, Jimmy “Country” Robinson, David “Bat” Williams (1967)
The Lead Shoes, Dir. Sidney Peterson (1949)
Little Nemo, Dir. Winsor McCay (1911)
Mabel’s Blunder, Dir. Mabel Normand (1914)
The Mark of Zorro, Dir. Rouben Mamoulian (1940)
Mrs. Miniver, Dir. William Wyler (1942)
The Muppet Movie, Dir. James Frawley (1979)
Once Upon a Time in the West, Dir. Sergio Leone (1968)
Pillow Talk, Dir. Michael Gordon (1959)
Precious Images, Dir. Chuck Workman (1986)
Quasi at the Quackadero, Dir. Sally Cruikshank (1975)
The Red Book, Dir. Janie Geiser (1994)
The Revenge of the Pancho Villa, Dir. Various (1930-36)
Scratch and Crow, Dir. Helen Hill (1995)
Stark Love, Dir. Karl Brown (1927)
The Story of G.I. Joe, Dir. William Wellman (1945)
A Study in Reds, Dir. Miriam Bennett (1932)
Thriller, Dir. John Landis (1983)
Under Western Stars, Dir. Joseph Kane (1938)

Although mostly forgotten by the general public today, Winsor McCay was a popular popular comic strip artist in the early years of the last century. When he turned his prestigious imagination to the burgeoning medium of film, he created this classic, combining live action and animation. The animated portion recalls some of the dream-like quality of his “Little Nemo In Slumberland” comic strip.

Rewatching Chuck Workman’s Precious Images, I am struck by the fact that it took this long for this Acacdemy Award winning short to make the National Film Registry, as this skillfully edited clips of iconic movie moments pretty much encapsulates what the Film Registry is trying to preserve. If you’re looking for a good list of American films you should see, you can do much worse than the ones Workman used for this eight minute piece.

If Sally Cruikshank’s animation style in the below short looks familiar that’s because she animated the title credits for the 1987 comedy Mannequin and the cartoon segment of Joe Dante’s contribution to the 1983 Twilight Zone anthology film, when young Anthony magically banishes his sister Ethel into the world of television. Here, Cruikshank not only manages to wear the influence of several early classic animators firmly on her sleeve, but manages to mix them into something unique to itself.

Landis’ Thriller may seem a strange choice, but without a doubt it is culturally significant, merging film-making techniques with the emerging music video genre for something that hadn’t been seen before. And yes, the short film version of Thriller did play in theaters in some larger cities around the country.

Boasting a combination of popular classics, modern hits and forgotten films of historic significance, the Library of Congress announced its annual list of 25 films to be added to the National Film Registry.

“The annual selection of films to the National Film Registry involves far more than the simple naming of cherished and important films to a prestigious list,” stated Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. “The Registry should not be seen as ‘The Kennedy Center Honors,’ ‘The Academy Awards,’ or even ‘America’s Most Beloved Films.’ Rather, it is an invaluable means to advance public awareness of the richness, creativity and variety of American film heritage, and to dramatize the need for its preservation.

“The selection of a film recognizes its importance to American movie and cultural history and to history in general. The Registry stands among the finest summations of more than a century of wondrous American cinema.”

Making the list year are such popular films as Mel Brooks’ comedy Blazing Saddles (1974), Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller Notorious (1946) and 1976’s Rocky. Films of historical significance on the list include The Big Trail (1930), which launched John Wayne’s career, 1929’s St. Louis Blues, an early soundie which features the only known film footage of “Queen Of The Blues” Bessie Smith and director John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) which ushered in the wave of 1980s slasher films.

The earliest film named this year is the 1913 Traffic In Souls, a sensationalistic expose of “white slavery,” i.e. prostitution. Early Chinese-American contributions to cinema are represented by the previously thought lost The Curse Of Quon Gwon (1916-1917) and Daughter Of Shanghai (1937) which stars Anna May Wong, the first Chinese-American movie star. Three other silent films also made the Registry- Tess Of The Storm Country (1914), the film that made Mary Pickford Hollywood’s first superstar, Josef von Sternberg’s The Last Command (1928) and Flesh And The Devil (1927), the first pairing between silent film superstars John Gilbert and Greta Garbo.

Documentaries placed on the Registry this year include In The Streets (1948) which chronicled life in post-World War II Harlem and Drums Of Winter (1988), which examines the culture of the Yup’ik Eskimos of Emmonak, Alaska. Also named to this list is Harry Smith’s experimental film Early Abstractions #1-5, 7, 10 (1939-1956).

The National Film Preservation Act, passed in 1988 by the Library of Congress, established the National Film Preservation Board. Under the terms of the National Film Preservation Act, the Librarian of Congress is tasked with choosing 25 “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant films to be added to the National Film Registry each year. Started in 1989, the titles announced yesterday bring the total number of films on the Registry to 450. This year’s films were selected from a list of nearly 1,000 titles. Once films are named to the Registry, the Library of Congress works to ensure that the film is preserved under the terms of the Preservation Act, whether through the Library’s own film preservation program or in collaboration with other archives or film studios.

The films on the Registry range from silent classics Intolerance (1919) and It (1927) to popular blockbusters like Star Wars (1977) and Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981) to historically important film footage such as the Hindenburg Disaster Newsreel Footage (1937) and Abraham Zapruder’s infamous home movie footage of the John F. Kennedy assassination. The complete list of films on the National Film Registry can be found here.

The complete list of films added to the Registry this year is as follows-

• Applause (1929)
• The Big Trail (1930)
• Blazing Saddles (19740
• The Curse Of Quon Gwon (1916-17)
• Daughter Of Shanghai (1937)
• Drums of Winter (Uksuum Cauyai) (1988)
• Early Abstractions #1-5, 7,10 (1939-56)
• Fargo (1996)
• Flesh And The Devil (1927)
• Groundhog Day (1993)
• Halloween (1978)
• In The Street (1948)
• The Last Command (1928)
• Notorious (1946)
• Red Dust (1932)
• Reminiscences Of A Journey to Lithuania (1971-72)
• Rocky (1976)
• sex, lies and videotape (1989)
• Siege (1940)
• St. Louis Blues (1929)
• The T.A.M.I. Show (1964)
• Tess Of The Storm Country (1914)
• Think Of Me First As A Person (1960-75)
• A Time Out Of War (1954)
• Traffic In Souls (1913)

The National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress announced the next 25 films scheduled to be preserved by the National Film Registry. This group of “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant titles brings the total number of films placed on the Registry to 400. The historical list includes a short film showcasing the first star of American cinema to one of the best World War II sagas ever filmed, from resonant film noir like 1950’s D.O.A. to classic comedies like Danny Kaye’s The Court Jester (1956).

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington officially announced this year’s list on December 28, 2004, stating the films in the Registry represent a stunning range of American filmmaking all deserving recognition, preservation and access by future generations. 

“The films we choose are not necessarily the ‘best’ American films ever made or the most famous,” Billington observed. “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 films do not have to be feature-length or to have had a theatrical release. The Foundation’s primary mission is to save so-called “orphan films,” films without owners to pay for their preservation. The films most at-risk are newsreel, silent film, experimental work, films out of copyright protection, significant amateur footage, documentary films and features made outside the commercial mainstream and some films made by now-defunct film movie studios.

“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,” Billington notes. He adds, “The Registry stands among the finest summations of American cinema’s wondrous first century.”

This year’s earliest entry on the list is 1909’s Lady Helen’s Escapade, a D. W. Griffith directed short comedy starring Florence Lawrence (“The Biograph Girl”). Lawrence was the first film star to use her name to advertise the film company (Independent Moving Pictures Company –IMP) that she worked for. She was also the first to receive billing in film credits, a notable change from the anonymity that actors and actresses had worked in until that point. Other film companies followed suit, and film star names began to appear in all aspects of press.

Other silent films on the list include the famous Charley Bowers surrealist short, There It Is (1928), which combines live action with stop-motion object animation, and 1931’s A Bronx Morning, part documentary and part avant-garde filmed by Jay Leyda featuring an sophisticated use of European filmmaking styles. The movie won Leyda a scholarship to study with the renowned Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein.

Ben Hur (1959), starring Charlton Heston, was included as it is the first of only three films in history to win a total of 11 Academy Awards. The film is also important due to the controversy created within conservative MGM studios because homosexual overtones were discovered in script and onscreen between the Ben-Hur and Massala characters. The scenes were not cut. The film also has importance as one of the first to involve huge marketing tie-ins, including hundreds of toys as well as ‘Ben-His’ and ‘Ben-Hers’ towels. At the time Ben Hur was filmed MGM was facing bankruptcy, but the film single-handedly saved MGM.

This year’s list also includes many memorable musicals, including the 1936 George Stevens directed Rogers/Astaire vehicle Swing Time, the sentimental favorite Going My Way (1941) starring Bing Crosby, Jailhouse Rock (1956) with Elvis Presley in the ultimate rebel mode, and 1954’s Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, an Oscar winner for Best Scoring starring Jane Powell and the late Howard Keel.  

The most current entry selected to the list is the cinematic masterpiece, Schindler’s List (1993). Shot in black and white with certain objects only in color, this was the first black & white film to win a Best Picture Oscar since The Apartment (1960).

The complete list of films on the National Film Registry can be found here. The films on the list range from silent classics Intolerance (1919) and It (1927) to popular block busters like Star Wars (1977) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) to historically important film footage as the Hindenburg Disaster Newsreel Footage (1937) and Abraham Zapruder’s infamous home movie footage of the John F Kennedy assassination.

The complete alphabetical list of films named to the list this year is as follows-

• Ben-Hur (1959)
• The Blue Bird (1918)
• A Bronx Morning (1931)
• Clash of the Wolves (1925)
• The Court Jester (1956)
• D.O.A. (1950)
• Daughters of the Dust (1991)
• Duck and Cover (1951)
• Empire (1964)
• Enter the Dragon (1973)
• Eraserhead (1978)
• Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers (1980)
• Going My Way (1944)
• Jailhouse Rock (1957)
• Kannapolis, NC (1941)
• Lady Helen’s Escapade (1909)
• The Nutty Professor (1963)
• OffOn (1968)
• Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor (1936)
• Pups is Pups (Our Gang) (1930)
• Schindler’s List (1993)
• Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)
• Swing Time (1936)
• There It Is (1928)
• Unforgiven (1992)

In 1988, the Library of Congress passed the National Film Preservation Act, and thus established the National Film Preservation Board. The law authorizes the Librarian of Congress to select and preserve up to 25 films each year to add to the National Film Registry. 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