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The Dark Knight, Blues Brothers Among 2020 Additions to National Film Registry

December 14, 2020 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
The Dark Knight The Joker Heath Ledger Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

This year’s additions to the National Film Registry have been announced, and they include The Dark Knight, Blues Brothers, A Clockwork Orange, and more. The Library of Congress has announced the 25 new films to be added to the registry, which collects America’s most influential motion pictures.

In addition to the above films, the list includes the 1978 musical Grease, DreamWorks Animation’s Shrek, the silent film Suspense — co-directed by a woman in 1913 — 1963’s Lilies of the Field which earned Sidney Poitier an Oscar, and 1993’s The Joy Luck Club. The announcement notes that The Dark Knight, which broke boundaries in terms of how superhero films were perceived and what they could do, was one of the biggest public vote getters.

“This is not only a great honor for all of us who worked on The Dark Knight, this is also a tribute to all of the amazing artists and writers who have worked on the great mythology of Batman over the decades,” said Christopher Nolan.

The National Film Registry selects films to be entered due to their cultural, historic or aesthetic importance to the nation’s film heritage. This year’s selections bring the number of films selected for preservation in the registry to 800 out of the 1.3 million films in the Library’s collections. The full list of this year’s selections in chronological order is:

* Suspense (1913)
* Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914)
* Bread (1918)
* The Battle of the Century (1927)
* With Car and Camera Around the World (1929)
* Cabin in the Sky (1943)
* Outrage (1950)
* The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)
* Lilies of the Field (1963)
* A Clockwork Orange (1971)
* Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971)
* Wattstax (1973)
* Grease (1978)
* The Blues Brothers (1980)
* Losing Ground (1982)
* Illusions (1982)
* The Joy Luck Club (1993)
* The Devil Never Sleeps (1994)
* Buena Vista Social Club (1999)
* The Ground (1993-2001)
* Shrek (2001)
* Mauna Kea: Temple Under Siege (2006)
* The Hurt Locker (2008)
* The Dark Knight (2008)
* Freedom Riders (2010)