National Film RegistryLibrary of Congress · Inducted 2011
“As "Forrest Gump," Tom Hanks portrays an earnest, guileless "everyman" whose open-heartedness and sense of the unexpected unwittingly draws him into some of the most iconic events of the 1960s and 1970s.”
Selected for preservation as culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.
Directed by
Robert Zemeckis
Studio
Paramount Pictures · 142 min
Box office
$678.2M worldwide on a $55M budget
Honors
Academy Awards — 6 wins, 13 nominationsNational Board of Review — 2 winsAmanda Award — 1 winAll 9 wins · 13 nominations on record
Academy Awards: Best Director
Academy Awards: Best Picture
Academy Awards: Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay
Academy Awards: Best Film Editing
Academy Awards: Best Actor
Academy Awards: Best Visual Effects
National Board of Review: Best Film
National Board of Review: National Board of Review: Top Ten Films
Amanda Award: Best Foreign Feature Film
Scholarship
Named in the title of 31 peer-reviewed works
Examples
Forrest Gump — Iverieli (National Parliamentary Library of Georgia), 2015
Forrest Gump, 2022
Forrest Gump: — State University of New York Press eBooks, 2017
Sources: Wikidata · Library of Congress · OpenAlex. The record of the motion picture, not an assessment of this cell.
FILM NOTES
Forrest Gump arrived from Paramount Pictures in the summer of 1994, directed by Robert Zemeckis and adapted from Winston Groom's novel. Built on groundbreaking visual effects that inserted its protagonist into real historical footage, the film became a cultural phenomenon, sweeping the Academy Awards including Best Picture and cementing Tom Hanks as one of his generation's defining actors. Its blend of Americana, sincerity, and technical innovation made it a touchstone of nineties cinema, still widely referenced and revisited today.
This cell preserves the encounter between Forrest Gump and President John F. Kennedy, one of the film's signature moments of historical insertion, where Zemeckis's team placed Hanks alongside archival Kennedy footage to blur documentary and fiction. Collectors seek this pairing because it distills the movie's central trick, an ordinary man threaded into extraordinary American history, and because Kennedy's presence anchors Forrest's journey to a specific, resonant moment in the twentieth century. As a single 35mm frame from that scene, it stands as a compact artifact of the film's era-defining craftsmanship.
Authentication Findings8 checks
Consistent with a 35mm theatrical release print of Forrest Gump (1994).
Gauge
35mm, confirmed by four perforations per frame on both edges; the strip holds three frames.
Perforations
Four per frame on both edges; spacing appears even and the punched edges look clean with no torn or missing perforations visible.
Soundtrack
A variable-area optical track is visible running along one edge beside the picture area, appearing as a dual bilateral variable-area stripe consistent with an analog optical track; Dolby Digital pixel blocks are not clearly distinguishable at this size, and no DTS timecode line or SDDS outer-edge tracks are visible.
Edge print
Numbers '3 8 6' (reading reversed, indicating emulsion-up orientation) are visible along the lower edge margin; no manufacturer name or SAFETY FILM text is legible in this capture.
Base & colour
The base appears with a slight warm-cream tint typical of older acetate or polyester safety stock; the silver dye image reads as neutral black-and-white with no visible colour shift or fading.
Projection history
No splices, cue marks or prominent scratches are visible in this capture.
Picture
Positive black-and-white image; the three frames appear to show consecutive moments of the same scene, consistent with a release print rather than a camera negative.
Era check
A dual bilateral variable-area optical track on a 35mm positive print is consistent with a mid-1990s theatrical release print such as Forrest Gump (1994), which carried analog optical alongside Dolby SR encoding.
Read from the original intake capture shown below. Observations only — film is authenticated, not graded.
This original motion picture film element has been examined and authenticated by Crown Grading in partnership with National Film Vault, and encapsulated for archival preservation.
Why so little survivesRelease prints were leased to theaters, not sold. When the run ended they went back to the distributor to be destroyed, and most were. What collectors hold today came from the prints that escaped that order, and no new 35mm prints of these films are being struck.
CROWN SERIAL 000064032
Original Film CaptureAs received
Photographed on the light panel at intake, before encapsulation — tap to open full size
Tap to enlarge
