National Film Registry Chooses 25 Films To Preserve; 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' and 'The Matrix' Among Picked

On Wednesday, 25 films, including Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) and A Christmas Story (1983), were inducted into the National Film Registry by Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. The films, which span from 1897 to 1999, bring the number of films in the registry to 600.

In a statement released on Wednesday, Billington said, "Established by Congress in 1989, the National Film Registry spotlights the importance of preserving America's unparalleled film heritage. These films are not selected as the 'best' American films of all time, but rather as works of enduring importance to American culture. They reflect who we are as a people and as a nation."

The oldest film included in this year's list is The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Title Fight and it was produced in 1897. It was the longest movie produced at its time, the National Film Registry said in the statement. According to the press release, the film was a "tremendous commercial success for the producers and contestants...generating an estimated $750,000 in income during the several years that it remained in distribution."

The newest film inducted into the National Film Registry on Wednesday the 1999 sci-fi The Matrix, starring Keanu Reeves. According to that statement, The Matrix "employed state-of-the-art special effects, production design and computer-generated animation to tell a story." The film's visual effects supervisor John Gaeta went on to win an Academy Award for his work on the sci-fi film.

Other inductees include Hollywood classics, Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote and starring Audrey Hepburn and Born Yesterday (1950), which earned Judy Holliday an Academy Award. Socially important films Uncle Tom's Cabin (1914), which featured the first black actor to star in a feature-length American film, and The Times of Harvey Milk (1984), a film about San Francisco's first openly gay elected official also made the cut.

According to the press release, the Librarian of Congress inducts 25 films that are "culturally, historically or aesthetically" important into the National Film Registry. All films chosen must be at least 10 years old.

The full list of the films chosen in 2012:
The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Title Fight (1897)
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1914)
The Wishing Ring; An Idyll of Old England (1914
Kodachrome Color Motion-Picture Tests (1922)
The Augustas (1930s-50s) 
The Kidnappers Foil (1930s-50s)
Sons of the Desert (1933)
The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair (1939)
Born Yesterday (1950)
3:10 to Yuma (1957)
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) 
Parable (1964)
They Call It Pro Football (1967)
Dirty Harry (1971)
Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)
The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973)
Hours for Jerome: Parts 1 and 2 (1980-82)
A Christmas Story (1983)
The Times of Harvey Milk (1984)
Samsara: Death and Rebirth in Cambodia (1990)
Slacker (1991)
A League of Their Own (1992)
One Survivor Remembers (1995)
The Matrix (1999)