Airplane!, Malcolm X movie to be preserved

The Empire Strikes Back, Malcolm X and Airplane! are just some of the 25 films the U.S. Library of Congress says it will preserve for its National Film Registry.

The 1980 sequel to Star Wars, directed by the late Irvin Kershner and executive produced by George Lucas,contained the revelation that Darth Vader was the father of hero Luke Skywalker.

The annual list includes movies from all genres, including The Exorcist, Saturday Night Fever, All the President's Men and the 1976 documentary Grey Gardens.

Lucas's student filmElectronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB (1967) also made the cut.Lucas's other directorial efforts, Star Wars and American Graffiti, are already among a total of 550 titles chosen so far for archival purposes.

Created in 1989, the registry 's boardselects 25 movies a year from a massive list of recommendations by the National Film Preservation board and the public.

Under the terms of the U.S. government's National Film Preservation Act, works are chosen not for their excellence but for their enduring significance to American culture.

Among some of the more obscure films is Study of a River (1996), an experimental film by Peter Hutton about New York's Hudson River.

The two-minute Preservation of the Sign Language (1913) focuses on George Veditz, one-time president of the National Association of the Deaf of the United States.

Calling it "a great revelation,"Librarian of Congress James H. Billingtonsays it marks one of the first motion picture recordings of American Sign Language.In it, Veditz argues for the right of deaf people to communicate bysigns instead of speaking.

"The National Film Registry is a reminder to the nation that the preservation of our cinematic creativity must be a priority, because about half of the films produced before 1950 and as much as 90 per cent of those made before 1920 have been lost to future generations," Billington said in arelease Tuesday.

Original copies of films are preserved in cold-storage vaults at the Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Virginia.

More than 2,100 films were nominated in 2010.