These Amazing Shadows Page #4

It's great to be on the board

because there are so many people

from different aspects of film

and scholarship

and everything related to film,

and they bring up films, you know,

that I always write them down

because I go, "Oh, I haven't seen this.

I'll have to go see it."

I'm a fairly new board member.

In the beginning,

it is overwhelming.

There are hundreds of films

that are talked about.

The discussions can range...

from being

very lighthearted to very serious.

They have people talking

about home movies,

people talking about newsreels,

people talking about

short films of various kinds.

And it's always

one of the most interesting moments

to see what has been chosen.

And as you go through, you think...

"Well, of course that.

I can't believe it wasn't chosen before."

And then you'll come to something

and say... "What?"

'cause this is thriller

thriller night,

and no one's gonna save you...

Now it really is American history.

Michael Jackson's iconic video, Thriller,

was named today...

to the National Film Registry

at the Library of Congress,

the first music video ever

to receive that honor.

Thriller,

thriller...

The nice thing about the list is

it's all over the place. It's democratic.

You're tearing me apart!

I vote for films

that I think are culturally significant,

and sometimes I vote for films

that I think

even films that...

I don't particularly like,

I will vote for it because I think

they have a special place in film history.

I certainly felt,

as a cultural historian myself,

that this was an important part

of American culture

and that it had to be preserved not simply

so that our grandkids could enjoy

the same films that we did,

but also so that they could understand

what America was like at an earlier stage.

Dr. Billington, the Librarian,

said something very profound

a little while ago.

He said that stories unite people.

Theories divide them.

So that in itself is a wonderful reason

to preserve stories.

Stories are profoundly important

to human beings.

500 years from now,

people will look back and they'll say,

"This was the beginning.

This was the first 100 years.

These were the origins.

Why didn't they take better care of them?"

And the "they" they're talking about...

is us.

Film is the art form of the 20th century,

and we have let it go?

The studios stored the films badly

and they deteriorated, they burned.

They didn't think of them as an art form.

Half of the movies made before 1950

no longer exist in any form whatsoever.

Maybe 80% or so of the silent era

is gone.

So much of film history

has already been lost,

but there's still a very great deal

which can be saved if we're willing to do it.

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