Shelley Stamp

Tells the history and importance of The National Film Registry, a roll call of American cinema treasures that reflects the diversity of film, and indeed the American experience itself.

One-hour documentary recounts the untold story of the remarkable rise and fall of the Thanhouser Studio, one of American’s pioneering motion picture studios during the first decade of the twentieth century. It traces the evolution of one family’s career as it transitioned from producing live theater to establishing one of the most successful independent silent motion picture studios. The Thanhouser Studio produced and released over 1,000 silent motion pictures that were acclaimed by critics and seen by audiences around the world. Set against a background of the industry playing out in New York, Florida and California, it is a compelling story of fame and fortune, twisted by the vagaries of fate and ending on a bittersweet note.

Dorothy Arzner was Hollywood's most powerful director, though History has forgotten her. She began working in the film industry at 19 as a "cutter" before the advent of editors, and gradually worked her way up through the studio system. Determined and ambitious, she was accepted as a director at Paramount, as the first woman to direct a talking picture for the star Clara Bow. A true pioneer of the cinema, she was the only woman director at a major Hollywood studio in the 1930s and 1940s, openly lesbian, dressed like a man, making movies "avant-gardiste" about women's condition. She was a mentor for Francis Ford Coppola, who considers her as one of the most important woman directors of Hollywood.