This exhibition features selected highlights from Treasures III, Social Issues in American Film, 1900–1934, which was released by the National Film Preservation Foundation following the enormous success of the first two Treasures from the Film Archives DVD sets. Treasures III focuses on American social-issue films of the silent era and contains 48 rare cartoons, serial episodes, newsreel stories, advocacy films, and other works, all of which serve to demonstrate how movies helped to change America. In addition to MoMA, the participating film archives are George Eastman House, The Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The selections in this exhibition, presented in new 35mm prints made especially for the DVD project, include Cecil B. DeMille’s The Godless Girl (1928), a sensational exposé of the reformatory system; Victor Schertzinger’s Redskin (1929), an epic of racial tolerance, shot in two-strip Technicolor at Acoma Pueblo and Canyon de Chelly; and The Soul of Youth (1920), William Desmond Taylor’s early feature about an orphan reclaimed for society through the juvenile courts. All films are silent, with musical accompaniment.
Organized by Steven Higgins, Curator, Department of Film.