National Film Registry

• 1. Introduction

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  The National Film Registry holds nearly a thousand films chosen not for box office success, not for awards, but for their cultural, historical, and aesthetic significance to American life. It was born in 1988 out of a fight over colors. Filmmakers and industry figures, among them Frank Capra and Martin Scorsese, had watched classic black-and-white films get colorized for television in the 1980s, and they were furious. The question the Registry was created to answer is deceptively simple: which films are too important to lose? And the answers it has given, year after year since 1989, tell a story about America that no single film could tell on its own.

• 2. A Battle Over Color

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  Frank Capra and Martin Scorsese were among the filmmakers who spent much of the 1980s lobbying Congress to protect classic American films from commercial modification. Pan and scan cropping, editing for television broadcast, and the colorization of originally black-and-white films had made the argument urgent. Representatives Robert J. Mrazek and Sidney R. Yates responded in 1988 by introducing the National Film Preservation Act, which created the Registry, defined its purpose, and established the criteria for selecting films.

  The mission that law set out was not just preservation for its own sake. The National Film Preservation Board exists, as the legislation framed it, to ensure the survival, conservation, and increased public availability of America's film heritage. Congress has reauthorized that mission multiple times since 1988, passing fresh legislation in 1992, 1996, 2005-2008, and again in 2016. The 1996 law added something new: a non-profit called the National Film Preservation Foundation, which, while affiliated with the Board, raises its money from the private sector rather than the public purse.

  John Ford's eleven entries in the Registry span from The Iron Horse to a segment of How the West Was Won, making him the director with the most films selected. That range alone tells you something about how the Registry thinks about a filmmaker's legacy.

• 3. How Films Get Selected

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  For the first selection in 1989, the public nominated almost a thousand films for consideration. Members of the National Film Preservation Board then built individual ballots of possible titles, which were tabulated into a list of twenty-five films. That list was then shaped by Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and his staff into the final selection.

  Since 1997, the public has been able to nominate up to fifty films a year, with an August deadline for submissions. The Board can add up to twenty-five films annually, and a film must wait ten years after its original release before it is eligible. Selections are announced in the final quarter of the year, usually in mid-to-late December. The only year that deadline slipped was 2025, when the federal government shutdown delayed the announcement; that year's selections were officially revealed on the 29th of January, 2026.

  What counts as a film is broader than most people expect. The Registry includes newsreels, silent films, student films, experimental films, short films, music videos, home movies, documentaries, animations, orphan films, and works in the public domain. A film does not need to be feature-length, and it does not need to have had a traditional theatrical release. As of the 2025 listing, the Registry holds 925 films.

• 4. The Oldest and the Newest

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  Newark Athlete, released in 1891, is the oldest film in the Registry. The most recent, The Grand Budapest Hotel, was released in 2014. Between them lies a span of more than a century of American moving-image history.

  The question of how quickly a film enters the Registry has produced some striking extremes. Annabelle Serpentine Dance, released in 1895, and The Tramp and the Dog, released in 1896, share the record for the longest wait: each was selected in 2024 and January 2026 respectively, gaps of 129 years from release to induction. At the other end, Raging Bull holds the record for the shortest wait. Martin Scorsese's film was released theatrically in New York City, Los Angeles, and Toronto on the 14th of November, 1980, and inducted in October 1990. That put it slightly shy of the ten-year minimum, making it technically the only film inducted before the waiting period had fully elapsed.

  Only eight other films have been inducted at the precise ten-year mark: Do the Right Thing, Goodfellas, Toy Story, Fargo, 13 Lakes, Freedom Riders, 12 Years a Slave, and 20 Feet from Stardom.

• 5. Range and Diversity

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  The 1970s produced more Registry selections than any other decade, with 124 films chosen from that era. Close behind are the 1950s with 114, the 1930s with 110, and the 1940s with 103. The 1890s, by contrast, contributed only 9 films, reflecting both the scarcity of surviving prints and the brief run of early cinema before the new century.

  By release year, 1928 stands out with 19 films in the Registry, tied with 1939. That 1928 cluster captures a pivotal moment: the industry was transitioning out of the silent era, and films like The Last Command, The Docks of New York, Steamboat Bill Jr., and The Wedding March were among the final achievements of a form that was about to vanish.

  Some franchises have earned multiple entries. The Frankenstein cycle has four: Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and Young Frankenstein. The Star Wars trilogy holds three slots. The Terminator franchise has two, as do the Zorro adaptations, the Philip Marlowe films, and the two versions of Dracula produced simultaneously in 1931, one in English and one in Spanish.

• 6. Directors Who Defined the List

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  John Ford's eleven selections make him the most-represented director in the Registry. George Cukor, Howard Hawks, and William Wyler each have ten entries, placing them in a tier whose breadth reflects careers that moved fluidly across genres and decades. Cukor's ten span work credited and uncredited, including his uncredited contributions to Gone with the Wind alongside credited masterworks like The Philadelphia Story and My Fair Lady.

  Alfred Hitchcock's nine selections run from Rebecca through The Birds, covering the full arc of his American career. Billy Wilder's seven include Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, and Some Like It Hot. Stanley Kubrick's six range from Paths of Glory through The Shining.

  Beyond the auteurs, the Registry preserves the work of directors often overlooked in critical histories. Wilfred Jackson, for example, appears seven times, not as the director of any single famous film but as a sequence director and co-director on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Cinderella, and Lady and the Tramp. William Kennedy Dickson, who documented some of the earliest moving images ever captured, has six films in the Registry, including Newark Athlete, the Blacksmith Scene, and the Dickson Experimental Sound Film, works made in the 1890s when film itself was less than a decade old.

• 7. What the Registry Preserves

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  Home movies appear alongside Hollywood epics. The Augustas, a home film from the 1930s through the 1950s, entered the Registry in 2012. The Bohulano Family Film Collection, covering the 1950s through the 1970s, was inducted in 2023. The Zapruder film, shot on a home camera in 1963, entered in 1994. These inclusions signal that the Registry treats private visual memory as part of the national record.

  The Registry also holds industrial films, educational shorts, propaganda series, and experimental work that resists easy categorization. Why We Fight, the documentary and propaganda film series made between 1943 and 1945, is represented. So is Duck and Cover, the animated civil defense short from 1951. Dog Star Man, Stan Brakhage's experimental short subject series completed between 1961 and 1964, holds its place alongside Citizen Kane.

  Something Good -- Negro Kiss, a short subject from 1898, entered the Registry in 2018. The Preservation of the Sign Language, a documentary short from 1913, was inducted in 2010. The Cicero March, a documentary short from 1966, entered in 2013. Taken together, these selections trace the full width of what American film has recorded about American life, including many experiences long excluded from the official version of that story. The Fuentes Family Home Movies Collection, covering the 1920s and 1930s, joined the Registry in 2017.