Treasures from American Film Archives

The Treasures From American Film Archives series of DVDs is produced by the National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF), a nonprofit organization created by the U.S. Congress in 1997. The NFPF publishes these DVD sets, with accompanying booklets and extensive commentary, to promote public access to the films preserved by the American archival community.

The NFPF’s inaugural DVD set — Treasures from American Film Archives, issued in 2000 — was the first video anthology sampling the range of films preserved by American cultural institutions. Featuring home movies, avant-garde films, documentaries, government films, cartoons, newsreels, political ads, and silent-era narratives saved by 18 archives from Alaska to West Virginia, the set presented 50 historically significant works that had never been available before on video. By providing these examples on video, the set helped popularize the idea of the orphan film. When the first edition went out of print in 2005, it was reissued as the Encore edition.

Since 2000, the NFPF has issued four other box sets, each with a specific theme. More Treasures from American Archives, 1894-1931 showcases the creative range of American motion pictures in their first four decades through examples preserved by the nation's leading silent-film archives. It was the first NFPF set to feature audio commentary. Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900-1934 looks at socially inflected films during the formative years cinema, when virtually no issue was too controversial for the big screen. Treasures IV:American Avant-Garde Film, 1947-1986 is the first multi-artist survey of the avant-garde film movement in the years following World War II. Treasures 5: The West, 1898-1938 explores how the West was imagined and documented in early cinema.

To date, five sets of DVDs present 214 films on 16 discs for a total run time of 2,861 minutes (47.7 hours). All NFPF-produced sets are region-free and playable around the world. These sets are:

A sixth box set is in production: Treasures 6: Next Wave Avant-Garde, and scheduled for release in 2013 with the following titles: Report by Bruce Conner, Radio Adios by Henry Hills, Hi-Fi Cadets by Lewis Klahr, A Visit to Indiana by Curt McDowell and Ted Davis, Plumb Line by Carolee Schneemann and 11 thru 12 by Andrea Callard. [1]

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