The Women's Film Preservation Fund Selection Committee includes: 

• Marian Masone, Managing Director of Festivals and Associate Director of Programming, The Film Society of Lincoln Center
• Anne Morra, Assistant Curator, Department of Film and Media, The Museum of Modern Art
• Thelma Schoonmaker, three-time Academy Award-winning editor
• Drake Stutesman, author and educator
• Catherine Wyler, filmmaker and Artistic Director, The High Falls Film Festival

This year's recipients are: 

A Land of Their Own (1950)

Director: Jeanne Swadosh

Producer and cinematographer: Hazel Greenwald

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 Blaché

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 newlywed 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 emigrated 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 Gordon was 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 (circa 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 television's most honored films. It has also achieved one of the largest audience viewings. 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 the true story of the all woman orchestra in Auschwitz, that had to play music while men and women were  brought into the gas chambers.  Linda Yellen was executive producer and producer of Playing for Time. Besides Yellen, other women who worked on Playing for Time included costume designer, Ruth Morley who is known for Tootsie, Annie Hall, Ghost, and The Prince of Tides among others. Casting director Lynn Kressel who also cast Spiderman, For the Love of the Game and all 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; Four Women (1977) 7 min 16mm sound color

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, Julie Dash's films have broken new cinematic ground and redefined the black women's image 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, 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. FOUR WOMEN is an experimental dance film that employs the use of stylized movements and dress to express the spirit of black womanhood from an embryonic stage in Africa, through a struggle she wages to survive in America. The film is a visual animation inspired by a ballad written and performed by Nina Simone.