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Past Women's Film Preservation Fund Grant Recipients
Women's Film Preservation Fund Grants 1996-2009
Legacy Project
On October 21, 2004, the newly restored and preserved Harlan County, USA premiered at Lincoln Center. NYWIFT's Women's Film Preservation Fund made this new print with funds from the Academy Film Archive. The film which was the Best Documentary Academy Award winner in 1976, chronicles the heroic fight for dignity and fairness of 180 coal mining families in Harlan County, Kentucky.
2009
A Land of Their Own (1950)
Director: Jeanne Swadosh
Producer and cinematographer: Hazel Greenwald
A Land of Their Own (1950) 20 min. color sound 16mm
In
1949, Hazel Greenwald traveled from New York to France and Israel to
shoot footage for a film about the journey of Jewish youth from
post-war Europe to the newly established State of Israel. She was
making a film for Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of
America, Inc. Hadassah, a volunteer-led women's organization based in
New York, funded rehabilitation programs and facilities for children in
Palestine/Israel beginning in 1934 after the rise of National Socialism
in Germany. Using monies raised by due-paying members in the United
States under the banner of "Youth Aliyah" ["immigration to Israel"],
Hadassah was the primary financial support of this program. The film is
a valuable historical record of how the American Jewish community,
particularly Jewish women, experienced Israel through the medium of
film.
Mixed Pets (1911)
Director, Writer, Producer: Alice Guy Blache
8-10 min. color, silent
Alice
Guy Blaché's long, impressive career began in 1894 when she (then known
as Alice Guy) was hired by Leo Gaumont to work with him at a
still-photography company. That business soon failed, but Gaumont saw
opportunity and purchased the remaining inventory in order to establish
a company of his own, keeping Blaché at his side. Within a year Blaché
had her directorial debut at Gaumont with the story film, La Fée aux
choux (The Cabbage Fairy, 1896), which she also wrote and produced.
Mixed
Pets is an early Alice Guy Blaché comedy short about misunderstandings
that arise when a new husband refuses to buy his new wife a dog, and the
couples' domestic help conceal the fact they are married with a baby.
The film is the earliest known extant U.S. production directed by Guy
Blaché, who immigrated from France to the United States in 1907, and
created her own company Solax Film, which she owned and operated, first
in Flushing, N.Y., and then in Fort Lee, from 1910 to 1914.
I-94(1974, 3:20); An Algorithm(1977, 11:00); An Erotic Film(1975,
2:30); Central Time(1977, 3:30); Michigan Ave(1973, 6:00); Noyes(1976,
2:50); Still Life(1975, 3:30)
Director: Bette Gordon, director
16mm sound, color
An
M.F.A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Bette Gordonwas first noticed alongside her former husband, James Benning, in
the mid-1970s. These seven short films combine the formal concerns and
optical printing strategies of the avant-garde structuralist film
movement with an abiding interest in landscape and the urban
environment.
Mona's Candle Light (ca 1950)
no production credits 35mm, 16mm sound
Mona's
Candle Light is the property of Geoff Alexander of the Bay Area based
Academic Film Archive of North America, who discovered it among other
reels of film that he bought at a flea market in an unmarked box.
There are no credits on the film, so it is impossible to determine today, who shot it and for what purpose. The film opens with a
panning shot of neon signs against a night sky, probably in the North
Beach section of San Francisco. The camera comes to rest on a sign
spelling out "Mona's Candle Light" in blue script that fills the frame,
then cuts immediately to the interior of Mona's where a woman who has
been identified as Jan Jensen is singing. Although Mona's was known as
a club that featured lesbian performers dressed as men, Jensen, a large
women who resembles Kate Smith, wears a conventional evening gown, as
she does in a still photograph with other performers, all of whom are
dressed as men, taken in Mona's several years earlier. The only other
identifiable performer is Jimmy Reynard, a so-called "drag king" who is
dressed in a man's suit and tie. Reynard's hair is cut in a short but
feminine bob and she wears bright red lipstick, suggesting that unlike
most male drag queens she was not trying to impersonate a member of the
opposite sex.
Playing for Time (1980)
Producer: Linda Yellen, Producer: Louise Ramsay, Assoc producer: Ruth Morley,
35mm, 150 minutes, sound, color
Playing
for Time was made in 1980 for $2 million dollars and is one of the most honored television films of all time. It had also achieved one
of the largest viewing audiences. Almost half of America watched the
3 hour show the night it aired without commercial interruption.
Starring Vanessa Redgrave and Jane Alexander, Playing for Time is a
true story of the all woman orchestra in Auschwitz that had to play
music while men and women were brought to the gas chambers. Linda
Yellen was executive producer and producer of Playing for Time. Besides Yellen, other women who worked on Playing for Time include costume
designer Ruth Morley who is known for Tootsie, Annie Hall, Ghost,The
Prince of Tides among others, and casting director Lynn Kressel who also
cast Spiderman, For the Love of the Game and all of the Law & Order series.
Besides Vanessa Redgrave and Jane Alexander, Playing for Time includes
extraordinary performances by Shirley Knight, Viveca Lindfors, Marisa
Berenson, Christine Baranski and Melanie Mayron. The movie went on to
win four Emmys for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Screenplay, Best
Supporting Actress as well as a Christopher Award and that year's
Peabody Award. It was screened at the CANNES and DEAUVILLE FILM
FESTIVALS.
Illusions (1983) 34 min 16mm sound B&W
Julie Dash, director
From
her innovative short works to her critically acclaimed feature debut, Daughters of the Dust, a dramatic feature about different generations
of South Carolina sea islanders, the films of Julie Dash have broken
new cinematic ground and redefined black women's images on screen.
Illusions is a drama set in 1942, a year after Pearl Harbor; the place is
National Studios, a fictitious Hollywood motion picture studio. In the
story, a female movie studio executive, Mignon Dupree, who risks having
her racial identity revealed, when she hires a black singer to record
the soundtrack to replace that of the film's white starlet. Unbeknownst
to the other members of the studio, Dupree is black. United by race,
the two black women form a bond and support one another.
This Time Around(1989,
5:00); Set In Motion (1986, 4:00, Traveling Light(1985, 2:00), Remains
To Be Seen(1983, 7:00); Interior Designs(1980, 5:00); In Plain Sight
1977 (3:00); A Brand New Day 1974 (3 minutes)
Jane Aaron, Animator
16mm, color
Jane
Aaron is an internationally recognized award winning animator. Her
independently produced films have been shown around the world. Her
films are in many collections including those at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, The Hirshhorn Museum, and The Walker Art Center, and
have been
included in the Whitney Biennial. She has served on the
juries of International Film festivals at Annecy, Hiroshima, and
Toronto as well as AFI, Illinois Arts Council and The MacDowell
Colony. Her films have been seen on PBS, Showtime, Cinemax,
Nickelodeon, The Learning Channel and
TV networks internationally.
Her film Remains to be Seen is currently touring as part of the
MacDowell Centennial Celebration. She is a Guggenheim Fellow.
2008
Anything You Want to Be (1971)
Director: Liane Brandon
16mm, 8 min., sound, color
Anything You Want to Be explores the collision of a teenager's dreams with social expectations and sex-role stereotypes. In a series of vignettes, a high school girl finds that, despite her parents' assurance that she can be "anything she wants to be," reality presents another story.
Betty Tells Her Story (1972)
Director: Liane Brandon
16mm, 20 min., sound, B/W
In two continuous takes, a woman sitting in a chair in her apartment tells a story about the purchase of a dress — twice. The contrast between the two stories reveals her deeper feeling about herself and her place in the world.
Maid of Niagara (1910)
Starring: Pearl White
Director: Joseph A. Golden
28mm/35mm, 10 min., silent, color
Maid of Niagara depicts the tragic story of an Indian maiden and daughter of the tribal chief, who is offered as a sacrifice to the gods. She is sent over the thundering Niagara Falls in a canoe and is followed by her lover in order to join her in "the happy hunting grounds."
Awarded to: George Eastman House
Desire Pie (1976)
Director: Lisa Crafts
16mm/35mm, 5 min., sound, color
Desire Pie is a cel animation featuring an explicit, humorous, and fantasy-filled celebration of lovemaking. The film begins in a bedroom, and flows from the real to the surreal, from absurd to abstract and back to the bedroom, all to the beat of a funky jazz soundtrack.
Las Madres: The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (1985)
Directors: Lourdes Portillo and Susana Munoz
16mm, 64 min., sound, color
Las Madres: The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, an Academy Award nominee, tells the story of a group of mothers, who have all lost a son or daughter during Argentina's "Dirty War" in the 1970's. They come together in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires and demand to learn the fate of their children.
Parallax (1973)
Director: Rosalind Schneider
16mm, 21 min., sound, color
Parallax is a three-screen film that addresses a central theme as a reoccurring metaphor for change. This dance film, choreographed by Edith Stephen, explores the sensuous flow of the female and male body.
South East Coal Company (1979)
Director: Wendy Ewald
super 8mm, 30 min., sound, B/W & color
South East Coal Company is a film made by a group of Appalachian children under the direction of noted photographer Wendy Ewald, who taught photography and filmmaking in Kentucky from 1976 to 1980. It contains unique footage of miners at work and include interviews with coal-mine employees.
Awarded to: Appalshop
Will (1981)
Director: Jessie Maple
16mm, 70 min., sound, color
Will depicts a black man struggling with a drug addiction and its affects on his wife and a street orphan, named Little Brother, who has begun using drugs. A meeting with Little Brother transforms his life and his will to overcome his addiction.
Awarded to: Indiana University, Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies
2007
Before Need Redressed (1995)
Director/photographer/writer: Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley
16mm, 42 min. sound, color
In Before Need Redressed, longtime collaborators Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley revisit their 1979 experimental film, Before Need, creating a shorter version that benefits from the artists' evolving perspectives and experience as they have aged. The re-edited film is a complexly-layered montage of sound and image investigating memory, language and death. Nelson and Wiley's partnership emerged from the dynamic avant-garde film culture of the Bay Area of the 1960s and 1970s and they have produced a distinct body of important work both in concert and individually.
Awarded to: Pacific Film Archive
Bent Time (1984)
Director/producer/cinematographer/editor: Barbara Hammer
Sound: Pauline Oliveros
16mm, 22 min., sound, color
Barbara Hammer is a pioneering and prolific visual artist, who has been making films and video — often including the female and lesbian body — since the 1970s. Bent Time is an ambitious visual trek across the US, stopping at high-energy sites such as Chaco Canyon, NM and the Golden Gate and Brooklyn Bridges. Inspired by the scientific speculation that time might bend in a similar way to light rays curving at the periphery of the universe, Hammer ‘s optically printed, single- frame film attempts to simulate the concept of bent time. The multifaceted and influential composer, Pauline Oliveros, scored the film.
Awarded to: Barbara Hammer
Flame of Mexico (1932)
Producer/writer: Juliet Barrett Rublee
35mm nitrate, 80 min., silent, B/W (tinted)
One of the earliest American historical feature films, Flame of Mexico was produced and written by Juliet Barrett Rublee, a social activist and important financial sponsor to Margaret Sanger. Rublee's story is about workers against greedy landlords, and was constructed to present realistic portraits of Mexicans. Shot entirely in Mexico, the film also provides a rare document of early American film production there, and is an invaluable example of the work of independent women producers.
Awarded to: Women Film Pioneers Project
Helen Hill Home Movies (2000-2005)
Director: Helen Hill
Super 8mm, 60 min., silent, color
Helen Hill's story is a multi-level test case for film preservation. An award-winning filmmaker, animator and teacher, Hill and her family chose to return to their New Orleans neighborhood, which was devastated by Katrina. Film labs refused to handle Hill's flood damaged home movies so she hand-cleaned the films with soap and water, halting their decay. Hill's super-eight images are poignant evidence of unseen neighborhoods and local culture lost in the hurricane. Tragically, in 2006, Helen Hill was murdered in her home, a victim of crime that continues to plague the area. Preservation of these sometimes personal films is a memorial to a unique city and to Hill's work and life.
Awarded to: The Center for Home Movies
Lipstick 74 (c. 1974, 8 min.); The Fang Gang (c. 1973, 7 min.); Dream (c. 1972, 10 min.)
Director: Jane Morrison
Super 8mm, sound/silent, color
These three Super 8 films, all made by the late documentarian Jane Morrison, offer a compliment to her often quiet, contemplative work. Lipstick 74 documents a woman making up her face, getting dressed and going out into the world. The Fang Gang dramatizes a vampire scene set in Maine's dense woods. Dream imagines a tragic meeting between 1920 flappers and pilgrims from 1620.
Awarded to: Northeast Historic Film
The Secret Agent (1983)
Director/producer/photographer: Jacki Ochs
Sound editor: Margaret Crimmins
16mm, 58 min., sound, color
The Secret Agent was the first film using now familiar archival footage to examine the legacy of exposure to dioxin spray — better known as Agent Orange. Ochs' documentary won a special Jury Prize at Sundance and premiered at the New York Film Festival and is particularly timely. The film is an invaluable document which reflects on past and present US wartime involvement and treatment of veterans, sustained abuse to the environment, and the residual unresolved issues of the Vietnam War. The film includes scenes of a young Al Gore and the music of renowned protest singer, Country Joe McDonald.
Awarded to: Human Arts Association
3 Short Films (1979-87)
Director: Heather Clary McAdams
16mm, 60 min., sound, color
Filmmaker and syndicated cartoonist, Heather McAdams, compares her low-budget, fast-paced, found footage collage movies to a colorful crazy quilt, handmade with love. Flouting conventional film construction (and workprints), McAdams' techniques include scratching words into emulsion, optical printing, re-dubbing and crafting surprising juxtapositions, creating personal films that are intuitive, lyrical, weird and humorous!
Awarded to: Heather Clary McAdams
Tales (1969-70)
Director: Cassandra Einstein
Editor: Jill Godmilow
Camera: Andrea Loomis
Sound: Gail Porter
16mm, 70 min., sound, B/W
This wildly inventive film,shot entirely during a single night, experiments with the concept of telling a tale from the inside out. Its four-woman crew — Cassandra Einstein, Jill Godmilow, Andrea Loomis and Gail Porter — both create the film as filmmakers and enter the film as actors. Tales is about story telling itself, the art of the 'tall tale' and the experience of filmmaking.
Awarded to: Cassandra Einstein
That Man of Mine (1947)
Cast: Ruby Dee, Anna Mae Winburn, The International Sweethearts of Rhythm
16mm, 45 min., sound, B/W
This charming musical stars a very young Ruby Dee, and exuberant musicians from the all-woman jazz forties' band, The International Sweethearts of Rhythm. It was made by a small independent black company for black audiences and was one of the first films to successfully counter its era's negative stereotypes of African-Americans.
Awarded to: Judy Chaikin
2006
Abstraction (1971)
Director: Rosalind Schneider
16mm, 8 min., sound, color
Abstraction interprets the female nude through a painter's eyes while the film's use of abstract form, natural landscape and distortions of surfaces create a rhythmic, pulsating structure that simulates the life force.
Awarded to: Rosalind Schneider
All Women are Equal (1972)
Director/producer/editor: Marguerite Paris
16mm, 15 min., sound, B/W
This black and white 15-minute documentary filmed in Nottingham, England by veteran lesbian filmmaker Marguerite Paris explores the life of Paula, a male-to-female transsexual. This film is a non-exploitative representation of an ordinary, well-adjusted transgendered person and one made before many other films on the subject. All Women are Equal is historically significant for its treatment of the subject.
Awarded to: MIX: New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival
Attica (1974)
Director/producer/editor: Cinda Firestone
Cinematographers: Mary Lampson, Carol Stein
Attica is an impassioned account of the 1971 rebellion at Attica State Prison in upstate New York. It is a famous landmark film because of its topic, its status as a germinal work of documentary filmmaking, and its place in the political history of New York State and the history of prison reform.
Awarded to: New York Public Library
Christine of the Big Tops (1926)
Screenwriter: Sonya Levien
35mm, 60 min., silent, B/W
This twenties' romantic melodrama unfolds under the circus big top! Written by screenwriter, Sonya Levien (who also wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1939), Christine of the Big Tops follows the love between orphaned trapeze artist, Christine, and Bob, a traumatized doctor who has taken refuge in the circus. The jealous circus owner separates the lovers. A storm destroys the big top injuring Christine. Will Bob have the courage to perform emergency surgery?
Awarded to: George Eastman House
Judson Fragments and Window in the Kitchen (1964 & 1977)
Director/editor/choreographer: Elaine Summers
Dancers: Yvonne Rainer, Sally Stackhouse, Sally Gross (Judson Fragments); Matt Turney (Windows in the Kitchen)
Camera: Paula Court (Windows)
Composer: Jay Clayton (Windows)
Judson: 16mm, 15 min., sound, b&w
Windows: 16mm, 11 min., sound, color
These two pioneering dance/film explorations utilize multiple film formats, music and dance. Judson Fragments is an evocative collage that recreates the ambiance of Judson Dance Theater during the 1960's. Windows in the Kitchen, shot in the Kitchen's performance space features Matt Turney dancing to the music of Jay Clayton.
Awarded to: Elaine Summers
Pastorale (1950)
Director: Mary Ellen Bute
35mm, 6 min., sound, color
Pastorale is one of the lively, abstract animation films made by pioneering animator Mary Ellen Bute between 1934 and 1953, and features an appearance by Leopold Stokowski with the music of Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze."
Quilting Women (1976)
Director/producer/editor/assistant camera/sound: Elizabeth Barret
16mm, 28 min., sound, color
Quilting Women is a joyful celebration of women artists who quilt, combining folk tradition and individual creativity to transform an ordinary household item into a thing of great beauty. The film traces the entire quilting process— from cutting the fabric and piecing together the pattern to the finale: a quilting bee.
Awarded to: Appalshop
Three Short Films (1959-1962)
Director: Margaret Conneely
16mm, 30 min., sound, color
These three short films — Mister E (1959), The '45 (1960), and Chicago: City to See in '63 (1962) — represent the peak of amateur film accomplishment in the late 1950's and early 60's. Conneely imbues her stories of normal domestic life with a seemingly light and innocent humor which has, in fact, a wicked and even sadistic dimension, so nuanced you often don't know why you're squirming in your seat.
Awarded to: Chicago Film Archives
Variety (1983)
Director: Bette Gordon
Screenwriter: Kathy Acker
Producer: Renee Shafransky
Editor: Ila von Hasperg
Cast: Sandy McLeod, Nan Goldin
16mm/35mm, 97 min., sound, color
A sexually-charged tale of a woman's journey of self-discovery that challenges common notions about feminism and pornography, Variety is the story of a young woman, Christine, who takes a job selling tickets at a porno theater. Instead of distancing herself from the dark and erotic nature of this milieu, Christine soon discovers a curiosity that begins to consume her life. Variety is one of a handful of independent feature films made by women during the late seventies and early eighties, with a script by the late novelist Kathy Acker and a score by John Lurie.
Awarded to: Bette Gordon
2004-2005
Behind the Veil (1972)
Director/writer: Eve Arnold
Cast: Janet Suzman
16mm, 50 min., sound, color
A rare glimpse into a Dubai harem and a document of the significant changes in the lives of Arab women during the early 1970s, this is the only film made by Eve Arnold, the world-renowned photojournalist and first woman to work for the elite Magnum Photos.
Awarded to: New York Public Library
Coney (1975)
Producer/co-editor: Caroline Ahlfors Mouris
16mm, 5 min., sound, color
A cinematic experience as breathtaking as any roller-coaster ride, replete with experimental soundtrack, Caroline Ahlfors Mouris' Coney is a 5 minute pixilated tour of New York's infamous amusement park and a unique early example of an "animated" documentary.
Awarded to: Caroline Ahlfors Mouris
The Dancing Soul of the Walking People (1980)
Director/producer/writer/editor: Paula Gladstone
Super 8mm/35mm, 67 min., sound, B/W & color
Paula Gladstone, a true Coney Islander, wrote, directed, produced and edited this film, and arranged the sound track, using music by Duke Ellington and the Drifters with a voice-over of her own poetry. Shot over 2 years in Coney Island, the film is an abstract mediation on life under the boardwalk, and a poetic document of a vanished world that emulates "city films" of the 1920's such as Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera. Made possible by an additional grant from the New York City Council.
Awarded to: Paula Gladstone
Homage to Magritte (1974)
Director: Anita Thacher
16mm, 10 min., sound, color
This film by Anita Thacher is an accretion of images composed on an optical printer before the general use of digital tools. Made prior to popular awareness of Rene Magritte's work, Thacher compellingly used his imagery to evoke women's interior monologues.
Awarded to: Anita Thacher
Meditation on Violence (1948)
Director: Maya Deren
16mm, 13 min., sound, B/W
Maya Deren is a principle pioneer in American avant-garde cinema.
Based on the traditional movements of Shao Lin and Wu Tang Chinese boxing, and made decades ahead of the current popular fascination with martial arts, this film was her penultimate work.
Awarded to: Anthology Film Archives
Reassemblage (1982)
Director: Trinh T. Minh-Ha
16mm, 40 min., sound, color
This innovative first film of Vietnamese émigré, Trin T. Minh-Ha marked the entrance of a major presence into independent filmmaking and women's studies. It reflects on and critiques filming in rural Senegal and questions practices of the "anthropological I/eye."
Awarded to: Pacific Film Archive
Windy Day (1967)
Co-director/co-producer: Faith Hubley
Character painters: Sarah Cologero, Faith Hubley, Nina diGangi
Cast: Emily and Georgia Hubley (voices)
35mm, 9 min., sound, color
Faith Hubley directed this classic of American animation by visually interpreting a couple's fantasies about love, marriage and life as voiced by their children. Newsweek called it "a midget masterpiece."
Awarded to: Sybil del Gaudio in collaboration with Emily Hubley, The Hubley Studio
Young in Heart Screen Tests: Maude Adams and Laurette Taylor (1938)
Starring: Maude Adams, Laurette Taylor
35mm nitrate, 16 min., sound, B/W
These unique screen tests archive work by two iconic theatrical greats, Maude Adams, famous for her Peter Pan (1905), and Laurette Taylor, remembered for her Amanda in The Glass Menagerie (1945).
Awarded to: George Eastman House
2003
Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act of Man (1975)
Director: Mimi Pickering
16mm, 40 min., sound, B/W
Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act of Man was filmed by Mimi Pickering, a documentarian whose work covers social issues of Appalachia. This documentary investigates the 1972 coal waste dam disaster that flooded surrounding southern West Virginia with water and sludge, killing 125 and leaving thousands homeless.
Awarded to: Appalshop
Christine of the Big Tops (1926)
Screenwriter: Sonya Levien
35mm, 60 min., sound, B/W
Written by feature scenarist Sonya Levien, whose 35-year career spanned the silent and sound eras. Her 70 films include Quo Vadis (1951), Oklahoma (1955), and Interrupted Melody (1955), for which she won an Academy Award. This narrative film encompasses romance and melodrama under the big top.
Awarded to: George Eastman House
International Sweethearts of Rhythm (1986)
Directors/editors/producers/photographers: Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss
16mm, 28 min., sound, color
Sweethearts is an award-winning documentary about a multi—racial, all women's jazz band,
directed, edited, photographed and produced by Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss, both internationally acclaimed for films on many subjects including Paris Was a Woman (1995).
Awarded to: Jezebel Productions
Joe and Maxi (1973)
Director: Maxi Cohen
16mm, 80 min., sound, color
Maxi Cohen, a founder of the Independent Feature Project (1979) and one of the filmmakers who established First Run Features, a distributor of American independent cinema, directed this
intimate and revealing portrait of the relationship between a father and daughter. The film began as an attempt to get to know her father, Cohen's film ended up dealing with diagnosis of cancer and subsequent death. A breakthrough, verité film, it portrays universal emotions while exposing family interactions and raising ethics issues involved in documentary filmmaking.
Awarded to: Maxi Cohen
My Lady of the Lilacs (1916)
Writer: Beta Breuil
16mm, sound
One of four "flower films" written by Beta Breuil, who was recognized by her contemporaries as a screenwriter and for her prolific (192 in one year) scenarios. These melodramas were written for the Eastern Company. Each film shares a theme of women and their metaphorical relationship to flowers.
Awarded to: Rhode Island Historical Society
The Wobblies (1979)
Director: Deborah Shaffer
16mm, 90 min., sound, color
The Wobblies was directed by Deborah Shaffer, an independent documentary director — one of few women working in 16 mm. The film was produced mostly with women as collaborators and principal crew-members. It was shot by pioneering camerawomen Sandi Sissel and Judy Irola. The Wobblies documents the early 20th century radical labor union, The Industrial Workers of the World, and is one of the first film to extend the genre beyond interviews and verité-style photography to include dramatic voice-overs and materials such as cartoons, paintings and posters.
Awarded to: Deborah Shaffer
2002
For the Soul of Rafael (1920)
Screenwriter: Dorothy Yost
Cast: Clara Kimball Young
35mm nitrate, 78 mins. silent, B/W tinted
The film was the first screenplay by Dorothy Yost. An under-appreciated film pioneer, Yost worked on 94 films, including Alice Adams (Katherine Hepburn), as well as sophisticated Astaire/Rogers musicals such as The Gay Divorcee, Swingtime, and Roberta. For the Soul of Rafael, was until now considered a "lost film," is a unique portrayal of Mexican-Spanish people as depicted by Hollywood in the silent film era.
Awarded to: American Film Institute
The Gravediggers from Guadix (1960s), Zenscapes (1969), and Women in Touch (1960s)
Director: Marie Menken
all are 16mm silent films; Gravediggers, 45 min., color and B/W; Zenscapes, 3 min., color; Women, 4 min., color
Marie Menken's influence on American avant-garde film is second only to Maya Deren. Menken was important to Andy Warhol (advising him on the use of the 16mm Bolex camera), Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, and others. Her films are meditations on artists, as well as on other unusual subjects. The Gravediggers of Guadix depicts the lives of Ascetic Spanish monks who live in caves and dig graves for the locals; Zenscapes is an abstract film dealing with light, and Women in Touch, a portrait of two women.
Awarded to: Anthology Film Archives
Tarantella, Imagination, and New Sensations in Sound (1940-1949)
Director: Mary Ellen Bute
16mm, sound, color
Mary Ellen Bute is one of filmmaking's most important pioneers both in her creation of abstract animation in the 1930s, and her experimentation with electronic imagery in the 1950s. Her innovations with abstract form and impressionistic use of color combined with music has influenced generations of filmmakers. These four shorts were quite popular, which is unusual for avant-garde works. They premiered at Radio City Music Hall and played at the Paris Theater and other New York venues.
Awarded to: Cecile Starr
Unmasked (1917)
Director: Grace Cunard
35mm, silent, B/W
Grace Cunard was an exuberant star of the silent scenes. Known as the "Queen of Serials," she often wrote, directed, and starred in her own films. This heist caper, co-starring Francis Ford (John Ford's brother), has no other known print.
Awarded to: George Eastman House
A Vilna Legend (1932)
Cast: Ester-Rokhl Kaminska, Ida Kaminska
35mm, 81 min., silent, B/W
A Vilna Legend stars Ester-Rokhl Kaminska, in her only screen performance, and her daughter, renowned actress, Ida Kaminska. The film is a unique glimpse into the vibrant Yiddish theatre and cinema of the 1920s. Originally a silent film, the film was re-cut by New York Yiddish actors in 1932 with added narration.
Awarded to: The National Center for Jewish Film
The Whitney Commercial and Jefferson Circus Songs (1973)
Director: Suzan Pitt
16mm, 3 min./20 min., sound, color
Filmmaker: Suzan Pitt has been a producer of innovative animated films, performance, and painting for over 30 years. Her emphasis is on psychology and nature. Her involvement with the Expanded Cinema Movement in the 1970s led her to combine live performance with her films. The Whitney Commercial, commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art, proved so successful that the museum went on to establish their film and video department.
Awarded to: Suzan Pitt
2001
Barnard College film collection (1925-1966)
Director: various
16mm, silent/sound, B/W/color
These short films show scenes of women's college life in the classroom and during New York City field trips from 1925-1966.
Awarded to: Barnard College Archives
The Blot (1921) and incomplete films (1913-1916)
Director: Lois Weber
35mm, 78 min., silent, B/W
The Blot (1921) concerns three men of various economic backgrounds vying for a poor young woman's (Claire WIndsor) affections. WFPF also preserved three incomplete films of Weber's: A Night in Town, Lost by a Hair, and Discontent.
Awarded to: Library of Congress
A Fool and His Money (1912)
Director: Alice Guy Blaché
35mm, 10 min., silent, B/W/color
A Fool and His Money is the first American film featuring an all black cast.
Awarded to: National Center for Film and Video Preservation, AFI
Quarry: An Opera (1976)
Director: Meredith Monk
16mm, 96 min., sound, color
Meredith Monk wrote, directed, choreographed, composed, and starred in this documentary. An Obie award winner, the film views the rise of a dictatorship and ensuing Holocaust through the eyes of a sick child.
Awarded to: The House Foundation for the Arts, Inc.
2000
Burnette Roth Campaign (1955), Florida Vacation (1956), and Connie Gordon (1961)
Directors: Pearl Roth (Burnette Roth Campaign), Ros Lasky (Florida Vacation), and Connie Gordon (Connie Gordon)
Burnette Roth Campaign: 16mm, 11 min., sound, color
Florida Vacation: 16mm, 6 min., sound, color
Connie Gordon: 8mm, 2 min., sound, color
These unique, amateur films, document integral parts of South Florida history and culture.
Awarded to: Louis Wolfson II Media History Center
Deliverance (1918) and Eugene and Agnes Meyer Home Movies (1927-1933)
Writer: Helen Keller (Deliverance), Eugene and Agnes Meyer (Eugene and Agnes Meyer Home Movies)
Deliverance: 35mm, 62 min., silent, B/W
Eugene and Agnes Meyer Home Movies: 16mm, 96 min., silent, B/W
Filmmakers: Helen Keller wrote and produced Deliverance about her own life. It includes appearances by her parents, her teacher Anne Sullivan, and, briefly, herself. Eugene and Agnes Meyer Home Movies are the home movies of Kathryn Graham and her sister, Elizabeth Meyer.
Awarded to: Library of Congress
Dirty Gertie from Harlem USA (1946)
Cast: Francine Everett
35mm, 60 min., sound, B/W
The film's star, Francine Everett, was a pioneering actor in African-American features and shorts, steadfastly refusing to play stereotypical roles. She was active in the Negro Actor's Guild and involved in the WPA Theater Project. The film is an African-American independent feature loosely based on Somerset Maugham's Rain.
Awarded to: Southern Methodist University
Divination (1964)
Director: Storm de Hirsch
16mm, 6 min., sound, color
Storm De Hirsch, a major ‘60s and ‘70s figure, is a published poet and filmmaker who has 26 films in distribution through the Filmmakers Cooperative. Divination is a "film poem that records a psychic event in color, shape and sound".
Awarded to: Anthology Film Archives
Liza's Pioneer Diary (1976)
Director: Nell Cox
16mm, 87 min., sound, color
Liza's Pioneer Diary was one of the first dramatic films to be shot in a cinema verité style, using hand-held cameras and natural light. It is the story of a woman pioneer told from a woman's point-of-view.
Awarded to: University of Kentucky, King Library
Riverbody (1970) and Near the Big Chakra (1972)
Director: Anne Severson
Riverbody: 16mm, 7 min., sound, B/W
Near the Big Chakra: 16mm, 17 min., silent, color
Filmmaker: Riverbody and Near the Big Chakra were filmed by Anne Severson, who shot a number of experimental short films in the San Francisco Bay Area between 1969 and 1974 during a time of art distinguished by formal experimentation, political awareness and a commitment to challenging conventional mores.
Awarded to: Pacific Film Archives, UC Berkeley
1999
Divine Horseman: The Living Gods of Haiti (1947-51)
Director: Maya Deren
16mm, 60 min., sound, B/W
Maya Deren was a pioneer, avant-garde filmmaker, writer, educator and theorist who influenced an entire generation of cinema artists. She has been recognized for her groundbreaking films, her daring artistic explorations and her ceaseless fight for the recognition of film as an art form. Divine Horseman: The Living Gods of Haiti, one of her most challenging projects, is a journey into the world of the Voudoun religion of Haiti.
Awarded to: New American Cinema Group/Filmmakers Co-Op
Ellis Island (1981)
Director: Meredith Monk
35mm, 28 min., sound, B/W/color
Meredith Monk is a filmmaker, choreographer and theatrical innovator whose non-verbal work, like visual and aural poetry, can be universally understood. Ellis Island is a spare, somber, and exquisite series of brief, meditative, black and white images of Ellis Island before it was rebuilt. It is the only print of this award-winning film.
Awarded to: The House Foundation for the Arts, Inc.
Natural Features (1990)
Director: Gunvor Nelson
16mm, 30 min., sound, B/W/color
Gunvor Nelson was a prominent filmmaker and teacher in the San Francisco area for 20 years before returning to her native Sweden in 1992. Natural Features is an important experimental film, extending the artistic possibilities of animation and collage imagery.
Awarded to: University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Paris, Maine & Chocorua, NH (1929-34) and Gandhi in India (1934)
Director: Elizabeth Woodman Wright (Paris, Maine & Chocorua, NH) and Adelaide Pearson (Gandhi in India)
Paris, Maine & Chocorua, NH: 16mm, 83 min., silent, B/W
Gandhi in India: 16mm, 11 min., silent, color
Paris, Maine & Chocorua, NH reflects on the every-day life of rural people in the early part of the twentieth century. Gandhi in India is the earliest known color film of Gandhi, and is believed to be the only film in existence from this period. Both films of have been recognized by the National Film Preservation Foundation and selected for the Treasures of American Film Archives program.
Awarded to: Northeast Historic Film
The Women's Film (1970)
Directors: San Francisco Newsreel
16mm, 40 min., sound, B/W
Louise Alaimo, Judy Smith, and Ellen Sorin were leaders of the all-woman production collective, San Francisco Newsreel, (The Women's Film). This film demonstrates the work of women within the influential Newsreel network of artists and activists. The Women's Film was the first American documentary to explore the feminist perspective.
Awarded to: Third World Newsreel
1998
Behind the Scenes (1914)
Writer: Margaret Mayo
Cast: Mary Pickford
35mm, 72 min., silent, B/W
Behind the Scenes is about a Broadway actress who leaves the stage to begin a new life with her farmer-husband, and who ultimately must decide between stardom and life in the country. Based on a play by Margaret Mayo.
Awarded to: George Eastman House
The Movie Queen (1939)
Director/camera: Margaret Cram Showalter
16mm, 11 min., silent, B/W
Part of a series of 16mm films made in the late 1930's in various New England towns, this 11-minute short was shot in Groton, MA in 1939 and includes appearances by local townspeople. Surviving examples of the "see yourself in pictures" genre are very rare. The Movie Queen is among the "only known example of such works by a woman director and cinematographer".
Awarded to: John M.R. Bruner and Leroy E. Johnson, Jr.
Storm de Hirsch: Ten short films (1960s-1970s)
Director: Storm de Hirsch
16mm/super 8mm, silent, color
These 8mm films were made by filmmaker/poet de Hirsch. The shorts — too fragile to be projected — are rare and historic examples of the work of women in this early period of experimental filmmaking.
Awarded to: New American Cinema Group/Filmmakers Co-Op
Where Are My Children? (1916)
Director: Lois Weber
35mm, 53 min., silent, B/W
Initially titled The Illborn, this social drama deals with issues of birth control, abortion, and eugenics. The National Board of Review disapproved of the film being shown to mixed audiences, and it was banned in Pennsylvania. The Brooklyn district attorney sued Universal Films to prevent its showing. Universal won the suit, and the Board of Review ultimately approved the film for adult viewing.
Awarded to: The Library of Congress
1997
Four Short Films (1934-1948)
Director: Mary Ellen Bute
16mm, 23 min., sound, B/W/color
Mary Ellen Bute was a pioneer who was among the first Americans to make films combining abstract art with music (1932,) and to have an abstract film shown publicly.
Awarded to: Anthology Film Archives
Raisin' Cotton (1938-1941)
Director/editor: Emma Knowlton Lytle
8mm, 25 min., silent, B/W/color
Filmmaker: Emma Knowlton Lytle was a Mississippi Delta resident who shot and edited this documentary about life on a large cotton plantation. The film focuses on the agricultural cycle of cotton and on the African-American sharecroppers who worked the fields during the Jim Crow era.
Awarded to: Southern Media Archive, the University of Mississippi
A Sister to Carmen (1913)
Producer/star: Helen Gardner
35mm, silent, B/W
Filmmaker: Helen Gardner both produced and starred in this film. She was the first American movie actor to have her own production company, The Helen Gardner Players, founded in 1912. It produced 10 feature films, of which only three survive. A Sister to Carmen, a 35 mm nitrate film, once restored will reside in the Cinema Museum, as well a the Library of Congress.
Awarded to: Cinema Museum, London
1996
America's First Women Filmmakers (1913-1921)
Directors: Alice Guy-Blache, Lois Weber
35mm, silent, B/W
An anthology of films by Alice Guy-Blache, who produced 300 short films while head of Solax Studio in New Jersey (1910-1914) and Lois Weber, who was as an acute observer of marriage and society in the 1920s, as contemporaries Ernst Lubitsch and Charlie Chaplin. The film includes two Guy-Blaché shorts, Matrimony's Speed Limit and A House Divided. It also includes a short, How Men Propose, and a feature Too Wise Wives by Weber.
Awarded to: The Library of Congress
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