25 films that will be immortalised by US National Film Registry this year

SYDNEY - The US Library of Congress has decided to preserve films with artistic, cultural or historical significance as part of its National Film Registry - and Darth Vader’s image proclaiming he’s Luke Skywalker’s father is one of them.

James H Billington, the librarian of Congress, chose the films in the registry, culling them from suggestions by the National Film Preservation Board and the public.

The library preserves copies in its cold-storage vaults among millions of other recordings at the Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Virginia.

Other films selected include Saturday Night Fever, John Badham’s 1977 disco musical starring John Travolta, Robert Altman’s revisionist Western McCabe and Mrs Miller, William Friedkin’s horror classic The Exorcist, All the President’s Men and Grey Gardens, a documentary about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ eccentric relatives.

Another unusual title is 1913’s Preservation of the Sign Language, a two-minute film of George Veditz, one-time president of the National Association of the Deaf of the United States.

“That was a great revelation,” the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Billington as saying.

The collection also includes comedies like The Pink Panther (1964), starring Peter Sellers as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau and the 1980 disaster-film spoof known in Australia as Flying High - Airplane!

“The most interesting thing for me is not seeing something I like make the list, but getting educated by the list that comes out of this process,” Billington said.

The 25 films being added to the US National Film Registry:

Airplane! [Flying High] (1980)

All the President’s Men (1976)

The Bargain (1914)

Cry of Jazz (1959)

Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB (1967)

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

The Exorcist (1973)

The Front Page (1931)

Grey Gardens (1976)

I Am Joaquin (1969)

It’s a Gift (1934)

Let There Be Light (1946)

Lonesome (1928)

Make Way For Tomorrow (1937)

Malcolm X (1992)

McCabe and Mrs Miller (1971)

Newark Athlete (1891)

Our Lady of the Sphere (1969)

The Pink Panther (1964)

Preservation of the Sign Language (1913)

Saturday Night Fever (1977)

Study of a River (1966)

Tarantella (1940)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)

A Trip Down Market Street (1906) (ANI)