25 films chosen for preservation registry

Among this year’s selections for the National Film Registry is The Big Lebowski from 1998, starring Jeff Bridges (from left), Steve Buscemi and John Goodman.
Among this year’s selections for the National Film Registry is The Big Lebowski from 1998, starring Jeff Bridges (from left), Steve Buscemi and John Goodman.

WASHINGTON -- Saving Private Ryan and Ferris Bueller's Day Off are among 25 movies being inducted this year into the National Film Registry for long-term preservation, the Library of Congress announced Wednesday.

The library selected films for their cultural, historic or aesthetic qualities. This year's selections span the years 1913 to 2004. They include such familiar and popular titles as The Big Lebowski and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and others that were milestones in film history.

Stephen Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan was chosen in part for its realism, with scenes depicting "war as hell." On a lighter note, the comedy Ferris Bueller's Day Off was chosen as the first film on the registry from the late director John Hughes. Curators noted that Ferris Bueller emerged as one of the great teen heroes of film.

The oldest selection dates to 1913 and is believed to be the earliest surviving feature film starring black actors. Vaudevillian Bert Williams gathered with black performers in New York City to make the film Bert Williams Lime Kiln Club Field Day. The film was discovered 100 years later in the film vault at the Museum of Modern Art.

The Library of Congress runs a major film-preservation effort at its audiovisual conservation center, built inside a Cold War-era bunker in Culpeper, Va. With this year's additions, the National Film Registry now comprises 650 films -- a small part of the library's motion picture collection, which contains 1.3 million items.

"By preserving these films, we protect a crucial element of American creativity, culture and history," Librarian of Congress James Billington said in announcing the new selections.

Some of the most endangered films are silent films. A report from the library last year found that 70 percent of the nation's silent feature films have been lost, and only 14 percent still exist in their original 35mm format.

The silent films selected for preservation this year include The Dragon Painter, starring Hollywood's first Asian star, Sessue Hayakawa, and the 1916 silent film Shoes, which examined poverty and prostitution, curators said.

Other films were chosen for their cultural significance.

A 1976 independent film titled Please Don't Bury Me Alive is considered by historians to be the first Mexican American feature film.

Set in a San Antonio barrio, filmmaker Efrain Gutierrez questioned his people's place in society at the end of the Vietnam War as thousands of his Hispanic brethren returned home in coffins. Others faced segregation, poor schools and prison. The filmmakers were angry with how Hollywood portrayed Mexican-Americans.

"We were invisible in our own national culture," Gutierrez said in a written statement. "We were being buried alive."

The 25 films chosen this year are:

13 Lakes (2004)

Bert Williams Lime Kiln Club Field Day (1913)

The Big Lebowski (1998)

Down Argentine Way (1940)

The Dragon Painter (1919)

Felicia (1965)

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

The Gang's All Here (1943)

House of Wax (1953)

Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (2000)

Little Big Man (1970)

Luxo Jr. (1986)

Moon Breath Beat (1980)

Please Don't Bury Me Alive! (1976)

The Power and the Glory (1933)

Rio Bravo (1959)

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Ruggles of Red Gap (1935)

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Shoes (1916)

State Fair (1933)

Unmasked (1917)

V-E Day + 1 (1945)

The Way of Peace (1947)

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

A Section on 12/18/2014

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