Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden recently announced the addition of 25 films to the library’s National Film Registry. These selections are made based on being deemed worthy of preservation for their “cultural, historic and/or aesthetic” significance. For that reason, it's no surprise that Spike Lee's 4 Little Girls made the cut. 

The 1997 film was nominated for an Oscar for best documentary. Exploring the Birmingham church bombing of Sept. 15, 1963, the film reopens the long-dormant criminal case by the FBI. A case that was ironically and successfully prosecuted by then lawyer and now Alabama Senator-elect Doug Jones.

4 Little Girls joins two other Spike Lee films, Malcolm X and Do The Right Thing, in the Library. Lee says he wants to dedicate the film’s selection to the murdered girls: Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley.

Lee also doubts this will be his last film to make the cut, concluding that his 2006 Hurricane Katrina documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts could be the next. He also has a film titled Black Klansman, a fact-based biopic, due out next year. The film centers on a black Colorado police officer who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan. 

“Just wait until you see that one,” Lee told The Washington Post. “It’s set in the early 1970s, but you can’t watch it without thinking of today.”

The other films to make the 2017 National Film Registry were:

Ace in the Hole (a.k.a. “Big Carnival”) (1951)

Boulevard Nights (1979)

Die Hard (1988)

Dumbo (1941)

Field of Dreams (1989)

Fuentes Family Home Movies Collection (1920s and 1930s)

Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)

The Goonies (1985)

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)

He Who Gets Slapped (1924)

Interior New York Subway, 14th Street to 42nd Street (1905)

La Bamba (1987)

Lives of Performers (1972)

Memento (2000)

Only Angels Have Wings (1939)

The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918)

Spartacus (1960)

Superman (1978)

Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988)

Time and Dreams (1976)

Titanic (1997)

To Sleep With Anger (1990)

Wanda (1971)

With the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain (1937-1938)

A solid collection. Congratulations Spike Lee!