America is turning 250! Come on out for the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Semiquincentennial Celebration of Celluloid! For nearly 30 years the NFPF has been helping to preserve America’s film heritage. To herald the 250th anniversary of the USA, we present a group of preserved cinematic gems demonstrating the American spirit and the drive of democracy. This collection of shorts from archives around the country reveals the many ways—from amateur to avant-garde—that American filmmakers have used movies to inform, honor, document, and critique. Films include Flaming Canyon (1929, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), an excerpt from Marian Anderson: The Lincoln Memorial Concert (1939, UCLA Film & Television Archive), Obey Your Air Raid Warden (1942, Chicago Film Archives), The House I Live In (1945, Library of Congress), The Story of Creative Capital (1957, Hagley Museum and Library), The Festival in Washington (1968, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage), Tellin’ the World (1972, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research), and the Bruce Conner film for David Byrne and Brian Eno’s America is Waiting (1981, Anthology Film Archives, preserved through the Avant-Garde Masters Program funded by The Film Foundation).