Film Preservation
NCJF's first priority is the preservation and restoration of rare and endangered nitrate and acetate films. NCJF preservation activities began 30 years ago with the rescue of a languishing Yiddish language film collection. Since that time, NCJF has preserved and restored 36 Yiddish feature films, making them available in 35mm, 16mm, video, and DVD formats.
The Center's other archival and preservations projects include features and documentaries from around the globe; early American silent film comedies and features; rare early Russian films; pre–World War II home movies of Yurburg, Horodok, Novogrudok, and Berlin; travelogues of Bialystok, Krakow, Warsaw, Vilnius, and Lviv; industrial and fundraising films produced by Jewish agencies; early documentary footage of Palestine/Israel. NCJF’s most recent restorations include the Yiddish feature films The Cantor’s Son and The Living Orphan, the preservation of rare home movies documenting the way of life in several small communities of Eastern Europe, Jewish chicken farmers in New Jersey, and merchants in Massachusetts, and film of President Harry S.Truman addressing the issue of Middle East politics at an Israel Bonds dinner in 1956.
NCJF was invited by the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Film Preservation Foundation to participate (with nine other institutions) in the millennium film preservation program, "Treasures of American Film Archives." NCJF is a founding member of the Association of Moving Image and a member of the International Film Archives Association and The Council of Archives and Research Libraries in Jewish Studies.
Read more about this topic: National Center For Jewish Film
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