The University of South Carolina and the city of Columbia offer an attractive setting for a collegial gathering of professionals interested in the subject. The USC Newsfilm Library houses one of the most significant film collections in the United States. In addition to an extensive film and videotape collection of local television news archives, the Newsfilm Library holds 11 million feet of the Fox Movietone newsreel collection, including all extant outtakes produced during 1919-1934, as well as the complete newsreels and outtakes from September 1942 through August 1944. These facts confront us with major historical, cultural and pragmatic problems. In the United States, a series of congressional acts over the last decade have intensified initiatives to save motion pictures.
Orphan films are the living record of the twentieth century.
Lacking the apparent commercial value of Hollywood sound features, footage from newsreels, industrial short films, avant garde cinema, amateur movies, home video, and other ephemera face the same marginalization on the preservation front that they encountered when they were produced. Yet it is clear that advocates seek to bestow a post hoc legitimacy and cultural value to orphan films. These words and concepts are worthy of critical inspection. If there is a consensus about the need to save films because of their historical and social value, then preservation policies, methods and selections are particularly important. The decision to save orphan films alongside commercial features represents a significant development in the field of film preservation.