For the Love of Film

For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon III,
May 13-18, 2012.

If you value preservation...

if the art of film is important to you...

if you've ever thrilled to an Alfred Hitchcock movie...

then please follow this link to make a donation to the National Film Preservation Foundation to support the effort to make the recently discovered silent film The White Shadow (1924) accessible to a wide audience via the internet.

A group of over 100 bloggers are trying to raise $15,000 and it's going to take many generous small (and large!) donations to get there.  With great appreciation for your generosity,
THANK YOU!

We're Going a Bit Off-Topic on Tour America's History Today...

Preservation is very important to me.  And that includes film preservation…

Today I’m taking a brief break from our tour of Colorado’s Save America’s Treasures site to promote an important preservation project that I’m involved with over at my other blog, 21 Essays. 

From May 13 through May 18, 21 Essays is participating in a film preservation blogathon called For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon, hosted by three topnotch film sites: Ferdy on Films, The Self-Styled Siren, and This Island Rod. As the need to preserve our culture is central to Tour America’s Treasures, I think it’s relevant to share about our blogathon here.

This year, our goal is to raise $15,000 in six days to make The White Shadow (1924) accessible to modern audiences. Here’s the story behind The White Shadow—and the reason why this project is so exciting to film enthusiasts like me!

A large cache of silent films was discovered in New Zealand in 1989. Because the films were on highly unstable nitrate film and many were in fragmentary condition, it took years of work to move ahead with efforts to both identify and conserve the movies. The National Film Preservation Foundation and the New Zealand Film Archives, with funding support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, led the preservation effort. A number of the movies turned out to be films that were widely regarded as “lost.” And among these “lost” films were the first three reels of The White Shadow.

The White Shadow has gained attention not because of its largely-forgotten star (Betty Compson) or director (Graham Cutts) but for the man who was its assistant director, writer, editor, and production designer—film legend Alfred Hitchcock, just 24 years old at the time and still a year away from landing his first full directing job.

Preserving the legacy of Alfred Hitchcock—that’s what this blogathon is about. All donations will go direct to the National Film Preservation Foundation to make The White Shadow accessible on the internet: To record a new score by composer Michael Mortilla and to mount the film on the National Film Preservation Foundation website where it can be viewed for free by all.

The image above is of Anny Ondra in Hitchcock's early sound film Blackmail (1929). That’s  the film that I’ll  be writing about all this week on 21 Essays in an effort to drum up support for this film preservation effort.

Please consider supporting this worthy cause.  Just click on the link at the top of this page to make a contribution in support of this great project.

Lee Price
Editor, Tour America's History

Tour America's History Itinerary

Wednesday’s destination:  Old First National Bank of Telluride

© 2012 Lee Price