National Film Registry Shorts Program

Intro by Daniel Eagan, author of America’s Film Legacy 2009-2010: A Viewer’s Guide to the 50 Landmark Movies added to the National Film Registry in 2009-10

90min

This program of short films chosen for preservation by the National Film Registry in 2009 and 2010 includes animated work, documentaries, and experimental films. 

A Trip Down Market Street (1906) 
Directed by Harry Miles
By attaching a camera to a cable car, Miles filmed the bustling activity of San Francisco’s Market Street only four days before the great 1906 earthquake leveled the entire city.

Scratch and Crow (1995) 
Directed by Helen Hill
An animated poetic and spiritual homage to animals and the human soul made by filmmaker Helen Hill while she was still a student.

Study of a River (1996) 
Directed by Peter B. Hutton
This experimental film focuses on the first part of a winter study of the Hudson River.

The Red Book (1994) 
Directed by Jane Geiser 
Geiser describes this experimental film as “an elliptical, pictographic animated film that uses flat, painted figures and collage elements in both two and three dimensional settings to explore the realms of memory, language and identity from the point of view of a woman amnesiac”.

The Jungle (1967) 
This film about gangs was made by African-American students under the direction of Temple University professor Harold Haskins.

A Study in Reds (1932) 
Directed by Miriam Bennett
In this spoof of women’s clubs and the Soviet menace in the 1930s, Wisconsin Dells’ Tuesday Club members fall asleep and find themselves laboring in an all-women collective in Russia under the unflinching eye of the Soviet special police.