Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress recently announced the annual selection of 25 influential films to be inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Selected for their cultural, historic or aesthetic importance to preserve the nation’s film heritage, the newest selections include a vibrant diversity of American filmmakers, as well as landmark works in key genres and numerous documentaries.
The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez (1982) is the solo Latino film included this year.
Acknowledged as one of the key feature films from the burgeoning 1980s Chicano film movement, The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez was based on folklorist Américo Paredes’ acclaimed account of El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez, a key work of the Chicano Studies movement. The ballad from the borderlands of Texas and Mexico, explored the creation through song of the folk hero Gregorio Cortez, a poor Tejano farmer accused in 1901 of killing a sheriff who had shot Cortez’s brother during a poorly translated interrogation. A posse of some 600 Texas Rangers pursued Cortez for 11 days before his capture, as widespread newspaper accounts of the chase and subsequent trial spurred the creation of the ballad. Relying on the prodigious talents of director Robert M. Young, lead actor and co-producer Edward James Olmos, cinematographer Ray Villalobos and producer Moctesuma Esparza, The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez employed narrative devices common to such classic films as Citizen Kane, Rashomon and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance to tell its complicated story in a nonlinear fashion. While some characters speak in Spanish and others in English, the filmmakers decided not to use subtitles to replicate in audiences the experience of borderland characters caught up in the unfolding tragedy. The film has been preserved by the Academy Film Archive.
The 2022 selections date back 124 years in filmmaking to an 1898 film of the Mardi Gras Carnival parade in New Orleans. The latest film to be added this year is 2011’s Pariah, directed by Dee Rees. This year’s selections include at least 15 films directed or co-directed by filmmakers of color, women or LGBTQ+ filmmakers. The selections bring the number of films in the registry to 850, many of which are among the 1.7 million films in the Library’s collections.
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will host a television special Tuesday, Dec. 27, starting at 8 p.m. ET to screen a selection of motion pictures named to the registry this year. Hayden will join TCM host, film historian and Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Director and President Jacqueline Stewart, who is chair of the National Film Preservation Board, to discuss the films.
The public can submit nominations throughout the year on the library’s web site Nominations for next year will be accepted until Aug. 15, 2023. Cast your vote at loc.gov/film.
Films Selected for the 2022 National Film Registry
(chronological order)
- Mardi Gras Carnival (1898)
- Cab Calloway Home Movies (1948-1951)
- Cyrano de Bergerac (1950)
- Charade (1963)
- Scorpio Rising (1963)
- Behind Every Good Man (1967)
- Titicut Follies (1967)
- Mingus (1968)
- Manzanar (1971)
- Betty Tells Her Story (1972)
- Super Fly (1972)
- Attica (1974)
- Carrie (1976)
- Union Maids (1976)
- Word is Out: Stories of Our Lives (1977)
- Bush Mama (1979)
- The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez (1982)
- Itam Hakim, Hopiit (1984)
- Hairspray (1988)
- The Little Mermaid (1989)
- Tongues Untied (1989)
- When Harry Met Sally (1989)
- House Party (1990)
- Iron Man (2008)
- Pariah (2011)