Preservation

AFI's National Center for Film and Video Preservation (NCFVP) continues to acquire films for its collections at the Library of Congress and at other American archives.

One of the rarest and most significant acquisitions was the 1912 Alice Guy film, A FOOL AND HIS MONEY. This virtually unknown ten-minute short, produced by the world's first woman director for the Solax Film Company, is believed to be the first film ever made with a wholly African-American cast. The Women's Film Preservation Fund provided a grant to restore and preserve this unique film, which was donated to AFI by David and Margo Navone of Stockton, CA.

The couple also donated other rare films, including the lost 1908 version of The Count of Monte Cristo, directed by Francis Boggs (earliest extant film of the Alexandre Dumas novel); The Lucky Holdup (American Eclair, 1910); and a 1910 film starring Gertrude Norman. These films will be preserved with AFI Challenge Grant funds. And, the 1911 Pathé travelogue, The City of Singapore, has been given to the Human Studies Film Archive at the Smithsonian Institution.

Other exciting donations and restorations include the award-winning 1933 Czech film ZEM SPIEVA (The Earth Sings), directed by Karel Plicka and edited by Maya Deren's husband, Alexander Hackenschmied, co-director of Meshes of the Afternoon. This documentary about Slovakian folk music and dance was awarded the Gold Cup at the 1934 Venice Film Festival and was donated by John Burkowski of Chicago.

Magdalena Arias of El Paso, Texas, donated her father Edmundo Padilla's collection. The collection is a mix of Mexican-American border subjects, including fragments from the Universal series LIBERTY (1916), the feature FOR THE SOUL OF RAFAEL, and one reel from the lost film THE LIFE OF GENERAL VILLA (1914) which starred Pancho Villa.