If you have even a passing interest in film or television nowadays, you know that preservation and presentation are hugely important issues. Earlier this month, for example, there was a minor controversy when fans of the classic William Friedkin thriller The French Connection noticed that a censored version of the film was appearing on the streaming service Criterion Channel. Between this and streamers removing shows from their platforms altogether, there is a renewed urgency—a quixotic fight against hopelessness—to preserve our culture.

It is in this spirit that the Library of Congress launches its Festival of Film and Sound, a three-day event that highlights the best from its film archive, the largest collection of motion pictures in the country. The Library is no stranger to showcasing rare films, whether it’s through its theater in Culpeper, Virginia, or its small screening space in the District. But this is the first time the festival has partnered with another theater, AFI Silver in Silver Spring, for a large-scale event that will attract film fans who love early 20th-century cinema, or simply want access to hard-to-find film prints.

David Pierce, a film historian and archivist who is leading operations at the Library of Congress Film Archive, explains the reasoning behind the festival to City Paper. “We focused on films from the 1920s through the 1950s because that’s the core of our collection, and we wanted to [convey] the breadth of our holdings … We chose films that are not available on streaming, not available on Blu-ray.” 

Not only does the festival include newly restored 35mm prints, it also highlights films from renowned Hollywood directors that are impossible (Pierce’s word) to see in the United States.

Unlike other festivals around the region such as October’s Noir City, the organizing theme around the the Festival of Film and Sound—“music and sound”—is a little loose. But this is a shrewd decision on Pierce’s part, as it gives him the latitude to show the various treasures from the Library’s archive. On the music side, they have rare films from Max Steiner and Bernard Herrmann, film composers who are best known for Gone with the Wind and Psycho, respectively. There are 35mm restorations of Steiner’s film Melody Cruise, a racy pre-code musical that was one of the early films to feature rhyming dialogue over and matching the musical underscore—an impressive feat for a movie made when “talkies” were still in infancy. For Herrmann, the festival has a print of All That Money Can Buy, a stirring melodrama from 1941 that won him an Oscar shortly after his work on Citizen Kane.

For Pierce the most exciting part of Film and Sound is the “sound” portion of this year’s theme. In addition to several filmmakers and film scholars, the festival will feature two events with Ben Burtt, the four-time Oscar winning sound designer and sound mixer. (Burtt has worked on the Star Wars series, E.T., and WALL-E, to name a few of his accomplishments.) 

Burtt’s contribution to movies is singular: For Star Wars, Burtt designed the sound of the lightsaber and Darth Vader’s voice. He also designed the sound of Indiana Jones’ whip, the roar of the T-Rex in Jurassic Park, and the voice of E.T. His presentations are unmissable events because, according to a very animated Pierce, “[They] have made me listen to movies differently than I ever have before.” On Friday, June 16, at 12:30 p.m., the first event with Burtt is a history of motion picture sound effects, which will be followed by Spy Smasher, “a serial from 1942 that Ben has recut from 215 minutes down to 94 minutes,” Pierce says. “He has cut it for action, so it’s a case study or tutorial for what you can do with editing and sound effects.” The second event, on June 17 at 1 p.m., is a more traditional conversation with Burtt that will include a dessert reception.

So what about that “impossible to find” film? You won’t want to miss 1936’s Ceiling Zero, a tense dramatic thriller about the dangers of air travel starring James Cagney. It is an early film from Howard Hawks, a journeyman director responsible for everything from Rio Bravo and Scarface (the 1932 version) to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Pierce is too polite to say it, but a major draw for this festival is more than, as he puts it, to “collect and archive American culture, [acknowledging] commercial entities will preserve it but may not make it available.” On top of that noble pursuit, the Festival of Film and Sound will provide unparalleled bragging rights. After all, part of the appeal behind a deep archive of rare prints—at least for those who are passionate about film preservation and exhibition—is how hard they are to find elsewhere.

Library of Congress’ Festival of Film and Sound runs Thursday, June 15, through Sunday, June 18, at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring. silver.afi.com. $13–$150.