'Dirty Dancing,' 'The Social Network' and 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' among films added to Congressional National Film Registry

The National Film Registry, a part of the National Library of Congress added, as it does every year, 25 films to its collection of tapes to be safeguarded "due to their cultural, historic or aesthetic importance to preserve the nation’s film heritage."

The 2024 cohort includes films as old as the silent short Annabelle Serpentine Dance from 1895 and as current as The Social Network, from 2010.

Other films that entered the registry are No Country for Old Men, Dirty Dancing, Beverly Hills Cop, Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

With these additions, the collection has reached 900 titles.

Hispanic presence

The Library noted that five films "include prominent Hispanic artists or themes." Two of them feature the Hispanic-American actor Edward James Olmos in the cast of: Mi Familia and American Me. Thus the artist reaches eight films on the registry, with American Me being the first in which he is listed as director.

"The key demographic change over the past 75 years has been Latino immigration," they state in explaining the addition of Mi Familia, by director Gregory Nava, "an emotional and evocative story of multi-generational Mexican-American family life, narrated by a second-generation immigrant."

Also noteworthy is the presence of comedian Cheech Marin, of Mexican parents, in Up in Smoke and Spy Kids (Mini Spies in Spanish America). The latter also features Antonio Banderas, a Spanish actor who appears on the record for the first time.

And in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Mexican-American Ricardo Montalbán plays the antagonist.

The 25 films selected in 2024