McG and Stephanie Savage Host the 'Black & White Party,' a Pre-Oscar Event to Benefit Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation Presented by Trident White(R)

McG and Stephanie Savage Host the 'Black & White Party,' a Pre-Oscar Event to Benefit Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation Presented by Trident White(R)

Hollywood Stars Step Out in Support of Film Preservation

LOS ANGELES, March 4 /PRNewswire/ -- On Friday, February 25 at 7:30 p.m. at the Mondrian Hotel's SKYBAR in West Hollywood, celebrities and VIPs from the entertainment, fashion and music industries attended the Trident White(R) "Black & White Party," an exclusive invitation-only event to benefit The Film Foundation, a non profit organization led by Martin Scorsese. Guests enjoyed cocktails, hors d'oeuvres and music under the stars to show their support to the preservation of films of the past on a weekend in which we gathered to honor the best films of today.

The Film Foundation, co-hosts McG and Stephanie Savage, DJ Tony O, and celebrity guest attendees, included: Eddie Kay Thomas ("American Wedding"), Emmanuelle Vaugier ("Smallville"), Erika Christensen ("Swimfan," "Traffic"), Isaac Singleton ("Pirates of the Caribbean"), James Van Der Beek ("Dawson's Creek"), Jennifer Gimenez ("The Sweetest Thing"), Jesse Metcalfe ("Desperate Housewives"), Kip Pardue ("Rules of Attraction," "Remember The Titans"), Lance Bass (NSYNC), Mekhi Pfeiffer ("8 Mile," "ER"), Melissa George ("Alias"), Natassia Malthe ("Elektra"), Nikka Costa ("Singer"), Olivia Wilde ("The O.C."), Pat O'Brien, Penny Marshall, Rachel Hunter, Rick Yune ("Die Another Day"), Sarah Carter ("Smallville") and Trent Ford ("Gosford Park"), among others.

Trident White's $30,000 donation to The Film Foundation supports the 2005 Avant-Garde Masters Grants, funded by The Film Foundation and administered by the National Film Preservation Foundation. The Avant-Garde Masters is the first grant aimed specifically at preserving America's experimental film heritage. These grants enable archives to work directly with filmmakers to save works significant to the development of the avant-garde in America. The prints produced through the preservation process are available for archival viewing.

This year's awardees include:

Jonas Mekas (b. 1922) began "Lost Lost Lost" as a documentary on the Lithuanian community in Brooklyn shortly after he arrived in America in 1949. Shooting bits and pieces over the next two decades, Mekas explored the immigrants' rebirth in their new land as a metaphor for his own discovery of his filmmaking aesthetics and helped to create a new type of avant-garde documentary -- the "diary film." Mekas, an avant-garde advocate as well as filmmaker, is the co-founder of Anthology Film Archives, the first American institution dedicated to preserving and presenting the avant-garde.

"Nostalgia" by photographer and filmmaker Hollis Frampton (1936-1984) probes the relationship of photography and memory through the destruction of a series of Frampton's own photographs, each slowly burned as the narration anticipates the next image. Widely heralded as a landmark of structuralist filmmaking, "Nostalgia" was named to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress last year.

The films of Larry Gottheim (b. 1936), a leading exponent of landscape filmmaking, celebrate nature and light. Among his four films slated for preservation is "Horizons," a feature-length study of seasonal change. Gottheim, founder of the Department of Cinema Studies at SUNY Binghampton, will collaborate with the Donnell Media Center on the project.

ABOUT THE FILM FOUNDATION

The Film Foundation was established in 1990 by Martin Scorsese and an esteemed group of filmmakers -- Robert Altman, Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Clint Eastwood, Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas, Sydney Pollack, Robert Redford, and Steven Spielberg -- to protect and preserve our cinematic heritage. Through substantial annual funding to the nation's leading archives, the foundation works to preserve and restore a broad range of films including classic Hollywood productions, avant-garde works, documentaries, newsreels, and silent pictures from the earliest days of cinema. The cultural institutions supported by the film foundation provide the U.S. and international communities with vital access to our collective film treasures.

Images available on:

http://www.filmmagic.com/ItemListing.aspx?cgl=103549&evntI=0http://www.wireimage.com/GalleryListing.asp?navtyp=gls====103568&nbc1=1

SPONSORS: Trident White(R) made a generous contribution to The Film Foundation to support the 2005 Avant-Garde Masters Series, the first grant aimed specifically at preserving America's experimental film heritage.

CONTACT: Media Brooke Smith LaForce + Stevens Ph: 212.242.9353 ext. 135 bsmith@laforce-stevens.com

Source: Trident White

CONTACT: Brooke Smith of LaForce + Stevens, +1-212-242-9353, ext. 135, bsmith@laforce-stevens.com, for Trident White

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