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Sorry if this may have been noted elsewhere, but I just read of a PBS documentary to be aired 12/29 on PBS, which will include silent film clips. Check website thoseamazingshadows.com

This is a really great documentary. I saw it on DVD last week. Though PBS produced it, it opened here in Los Angeles two weeks ago and was released on DVD last Tuesday. It tells the story of the films on the National Film Registry, but mostly focuses on color films of the last 40 years. There are clips from primitive silents/industrial/avant garde/home movie/black and white films however. Celebrities, archivists, and members of the National Film Preservation Board speak about the films and preservation.

Just ordered the Blu Ray which has stuff on it not on the DVD version. Never heard of it before, can't have been too promoted by Amazon or it would have been on order already.

It's also available as a download on iTunes.

If searching for it, the title is actually These Amazing Shadows.

http://www.theseamazingshadows.com/index.html" target="_blank" target="_blank

I thought "These" was the sequel.

Here's what appears to be a website seeking funding for an earlier incarnation of THESE AMAZING SHADOWS, with a slightly different focus...

I'm glad I saw this on PBS, but wish it had less clips of classic films and less feel-good platitudes about our film heritage -- we've seen that stuff before, more than once now.

For that matter, I think the National Film Registry, while it still adds interesting titles each year, is on the verge of irrelevance as the populist choices take an ever-larger percentage of the total list. Early on it was easy to name a blockbuster like STAR WARS as very important to film history (like it or not -- and I don't, and feel it damaged pop culture for decades -- but that's another thread). It was clearly influential and important.

Now, even if you think THE MUPPET MOVIE or FOREST GUMP are great, four star movies, you probably would not argue that they are important in the grand timeline of things.

I think the same thing has happened to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Including the likes of Guns and Roses brings down the significance of the entire list of inductees. I don't think Guns and Roses are bad, but their period of importance was pretty short, and they pale in significance next to a Chuck Berry or Bob Dylan.

These list makers are either running out of obvious pantheon choices (though their job is to ferret out the non-obvious), or bending over backwards to attract the attention of younger supporters.

You may also stream These Amazing Shadows through Netflix.

Mark Pruett wrote:You may also stream These Amazing Shadows through Netflix.

Which I did and thoroughly enjoyed.

I missed the PBS broadcast, and with a dialup connection, internet streaming is not an option, but I did order the Blu-ray last week and will look forward to watching it sometime in the next week or so. I'll likely follow it immediately with a Blu-ray of one or two of the films on the list, maybe MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, or the upcoming release of MANHATTAN later this month.

Christopher Jacobs wrote:I missed the PBS broadcast, and with a dialup connection, internet streaming is not an option, but I did order the Blu-ray last week and will look forward to watching it sometime in the next week or so. I'll likely follow it immediately with a Blu-ray of one or two of the films on the list, maybe MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, or the upcoming release of MANHATTAN later this month.

Aw man, you're on dialup? I feel for ya.

Call me ultra-picky, but whenever they showed a piece of film including the soundtrack, it was on the wrong side.
People skilled enough to make a documentary like this should know better.

DM

Speaking of soundtracks: The beginning of the documentary stressed that the National Film Registry was created in the wake of the colorization controversy, to ensure that films would be preserved in their original form.

And then the filmmakers chose NOT to show everything in its original form -- most egregiously by adding new music on top of sound film clips, specifically that scmaltzy orchestration that tells audiences what they're supposed to feel in the climax of most contemporary American dramatic films.

Blast, I missed this again! Maybe it hasn't been on in my area yet? Sounds like there are a few things to object to. They actually reversed the soundtracks? That's awful.

From what I've been told by someone on the National Film Preservation Board, this was the first film ever made by the filmmakers, so I think they did a remarkable job. Yes, it had some technical problems, but they wonderfully showed why people love film and certain sequences in particular. They were obviously aiming this at younger audiences, that's why they used two young women film archivists and not Mike Mashon of LOC or Mike Pogorzelski of the Academy Film Archive. It's probably why they also mainly focused on color clips.

Say, did I forget to post the webpage link in my original post in this thread...or was my post changed?

I originally was intending to link to a page seeking funding for an earlier version of THESE AMAZING SHADOWS, called LOST FOREVER.

And now I cannot find that webpage (though there are still a few scant mentions of LOST FOREVER).

Though there is this:

http://web.archive.org/web/201005142057 ... movie.com/" target="_blank

My Blu-ray of THESE AMAZING SHADOWS arrived yesterday and I watched it last night, and the bonus features tonight. I agree with most of what others have said. It's a generally good documentary on the history of American film and the need for preservation of a wide variety of films. They nicely explained how films are chosen for the National Film Registry due to historic, cultural, or aesthetic significance (pretty much allowing them to pick anything). Running 88 minutes, overall it was quite good, despite a couple of brief instances of inadequately handled loaded political issues (can we say "THE BIRTH OF A NATION"?) that needed better context. The balance of clips wasn't bad at all, with a good sampling of silent and black-and-white sound clips as well as the more familiar color films like STAR WARS, THE GODFATHER, GONE WITH THE WIND, THE WIZARD OF OZ, etc. An admirably sizable amount of time was devoted to things like newsreels, home movies, experimental film, and ephemera like the classic "LET'S GO OUT TO THE LOBBY" trailer. The interviewees were all interesting and enthusiastic (and several of them very familiar to Nitrateville members).

The music score is really quite good, but I definitely was distracted (and like Jay more than a bit annoyed) when it continued to play over film clips of sound films that originally had different music, especially the clip from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. If those clips had been all picture-only it would have seemed more consistent, but sometimes we could still hear the dialogue with the new music. I was a bit distracted as well by the seemingly random shifts in picture quality from absolutely beautiful HD film clips to so-so standard-definition film clips to really low-res pixillated film clips. If these were all preserved films, the clips should all have been chosen to spotlight what preservation can do, and re-scanned if necessary rather than going with some old VHS master that might have been lying around. And like Dick, I found every single instance of the moving graphics simulating strips of real film, showing the soundtrack clearly on the wrong side of the picture (and moreover a soundtrack shown beside the clip to THE GOLD RUSH, not to mention the 35mm "flat" clip from WEST SIDE STORY with an optical soundtrack on the wrong side of the film), more grating than fingernails on a blackboard. A documentary specifically about film preservation should really educate its graphic artists to either get it right or simply to stylize it completely, and that fact alone would mitigate against showing this documentary to a class of serious film students unless to point out how such obvious mistakes find their ways into supposedly professional finished products. (Also nobody bothered to explain why some soundtracks were cyan-colored and some were black and white, another whole kettle of fish that belongs in our "Tech Talk" forum.) Nevertheless, this movie is a very good effort and really needs to be seen by non film specialists. I'd probably grade it a solid B.

Just as good, actually quite a bit better, is a half-hour bonus documentary about film preservation and restoration called LOST FOREVER, that goes into much more detail on how the Library of Congress preserves and restores films. There's about another half hour of extras including a trailer, a brief interview with the composer, a couple of clips from the film's premiere at Sundance with some all-too-brief clips of post-screening panel discussions ("Nitrate is like plastic gunpowder." "Well, yes, but actually the dangers of nitrate have been greatly exaggerated." -wait, saywhat?), four interesting deleted/alternate scenes I wish would have been in the final movie (especially the "favorite films" set), and three selections of good outtakes from interviews of Christopher Nolan, John Waters, and Tim Roth. Nolan makes some good observations that would have been nice to include (notably about the theatrical viewing experience), as does Roth (who mainly gives an anecdote about Francis Ford Coppola), but the Waters clips are pointed, opinionated, and hysterical, and some of them should definitely have made it into the final cut.

The movie itself and all the extras are in HD, and while the Blu-ray is currently a bit pricey at around $25, if the profits help PBS do more programming along this line, it's well spent. It would be even better if profits from Blu-ray sales could go to the Library of Congress, much like our own Nitrateville calendar supports various archives each year. Non film buffs who have at least a passing interest in movies made before last year should really be encouraged to watch this and all of its bonus features. I love the line about the films making the annual 25-title list being preserved in the form they were originally shown in, specifically referencing STAR WARS and "the version it's in this month."

THESE AMAZING SHADOWS on Blu-ray --
Movie: B
Video: A-
Audio: A
Extras: B+

One common misconception about the NFR, which was not addressed at all by the documentary, is the belief that all of the films on the list have already been "saved" by preservation. The list is really more a suggestion of what ought to be preserved rather than a specific mechanism or funding source for preserving films. Many of the films named to it have not been preserved, any may not necessarily ever be preserved -- in their original form or otherwise.

Speaking of, there can be many levels and interpretations of "in its original form."