2 Disney films added to the U.S. National Film Registry
Two more Disney produced films have been added to the National Film Registry.
Each year 25 motion pictures are be named to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. According to the Library of Congress, these films epitomize the diversity and richness of the nation’s cinematic heritage and deserve to be preserved because of their cultural, historic or aesthetic importance.
For 2015, the two films choices are a bit different.
The first is the 1937 “The Old Mill,” which was one of the Silly Symphonies series. In this movie, animals battle thunderstorm that nearly destroys their home in an abandoned windmill.
According to the Film Registry: “Directed by Wilfred Jackson, the film acted as a testing ground for audience interest in longer form animation as well as for advanced technologies, including the first use of the multiplane camera, which added three-dimensional depth. It also featured more complex lighting and realistic depictions of animal behavior that would be perfected in ‘Snow White,’ ‘Fantasia’ and ‘Bambi.’
The film won an Oscar for best animated short in 1937, and the studio won an Oscar for its revolutionary camera.
The second is the 1946 “The Story of Menstruation,” which was produced through the Educational and Industrial Film Division of Walt Disney and sponsored by Kimberly-Clark, the makers of Kotex.
Distributed free to schools and girls’ clubs with an accompanying pamphlet titled “Very Personally Yours,” the film used friendly Disney-style characters to “encourage a healthy, normal attitude” toward menstruation.
According to Joan Jacobs Brumberg, author of “The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls,” approximately 93 million American women, mostly teenagers, viewed this film between 1946 through the late 1960s.
Here is a look at the other Disney films on the list:
- Bambi (1942)
- Beauty and the Beast (1991)
- Fantasia (1940)
- Mary Poppins (1964)
- Pinocchio (1940)
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1933)
- The Living Desert (1953)
- The Three Little Pigs (1933)
- Steamboat Willie (1928)
- Toy Story (1995)
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