From a Front Row Features Staff Reporter

WASHINGTON, D.C.—”Saving Private Ryan” and the animated short film “Luxo Jr.” are among the 25 motion pictures named to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, it was announced today. Selection to the registry will help ensure that these films will be preserved for all time.

“The National Film Registry showcases the extraordinary diversity of America’s film heritage and the disparate strands making it so vibrant,” said James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress in a statement. “By preserving these films, we protect a crucial element of American creativity, culture and history.”

“Saving Private Ryan,” theatrically released in 1998, is a treatise about the harsh realities of war, which earned director Steven Spielberg an Academy Award. Other feature films added to the 2014 registry include the chilling 1968 horror masterpiece “Rosemary’s Baby;” Arthur Penn’s Western saga starring Dustin Hoffman, “Little Big Man;” director John Hughes’ “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off;” and Joel and Ethan Coen’s cult classic, “The Big Lebowski.”

Disney/Pixar chief creative officer John Lasseter made the animated short “Luxo Jr.,” which pioneered the use of computer-generated technology in animated films, in 1986.

Other entries include the 1953 “House of Wax,” the first full-length 3-D color film produced and released by a major American film studio; 1971’s “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” starring Gene Wilder; Howard Hawks’ 1959 Western “Rio Bravo;”; and Charles Laughton comic turn in the 1935 “Ruggles of Red Gap.” Also making the list is Efraín Gutiérrez’s 1976 independent movie, “Please Don’t Bury Me Alive!,” considered by historians to be the first Chicano feature film.

The documentaries and shorts named to the registry include “Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport,” a film examining the rescue operation that placed thousands of Jewish children with foster families in Great Britain prior to World War II; “Felicia,” a 13-minute short that showcases a Watts neighborhood through a teenager’s first-person narrative; and the 1980 “Moon Breath Beat,” created by animator Lisze Bechtold when she was a student at CalArts.

Spanning the period 1913-2004, the films named to the registry include Hollywood classics, documentaries, silent movies, student films, independent and experimental motion pictures. This year’s selections bring the number of films in the registry to 650, which is a small fraction of the Library’s moving-image collection of 1.3 million items.

Films Selected for the 2014 National Film Registry
13 Lakes (2004)
Bert Williams Lime Kiln Club Field Day (1913)
The Big Lebowski (1998)
Down Argentine Way (1940)
The Dragon Painter (1919)
Felicia (1965
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
The Gang’s All Here (1943)
House of Wax (1953)
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (2000)
Little Big Man (1970)
Luxo Jr. (1986)
Moon Breath Beat (1980)
Please Don’t Bury Me Alive! (1976)
The Power and the Glory (1933)
Rio Bravo (1959)
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Ruggles of Red Gap (1935)
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Shoes (1916)
State Fair (1933)
Unmasked (1917)
V-E + 1 (1945)
The Way of Peace (1947)
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)