Dark Knight, Joy Luck Club, Shrek added to National Film Registry

It's time to whip up a celebratory batch of waffles for the 2020 Library of Congress inductees.

The National Film Registry has selected 25 historic movies to be preserved in the Library of Congress, including Oscar-winning blockbusters and diverse landmark features.

Among notable films joining the registry are Christopher Nolan's 2008 superhero epic The Dark Knight, for which Heath Ledger won a posthumous Academy Award in 2009; DreamWorks' modern animated classic Shrek starring Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, and Cameron Diaz; the beloved John Travolta-Olivia Newton-John musical Grease; Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange; and Wayne Wang's acclaimed adaptation of Amy Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club.

"This is not only a great honor for all of us who worked on The Dark Knight, this is also a tribute to all of the amazing artists and writers who have worked on the great mythology of Batman over the decades," Nolan said of the film's induction via press statement.

Older titles to be inducted include the 1913 silent movie Suspense, which was co-directed by a woman, Lois Weber, 107 years ago, and Sidney Poitier's 1963 classic Lilies of the Field, which made history as its lead performer became the first Black man to win Best Actor in Academy Awards history. In a statement, Poitier and his family added: "Lilies of the Field stirs up such great remembrances in our family, from the littlest Poitiers watching a young and agile 'Papa' to the oldest – Papa Sidney himself!"

The 2020 collective class breaks a diversity record for the Library of Congress, with nine films directed by women (also including Kathryn Bigelow's Best Picture winner The Hurt Locker) and seven directed by people of color (Melvin Van Peebles' Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, Kathleen Collins' Losing Ground).

"The National Film Registry is an important record of American history, culture and creativity, captured through one of the great American art forms, our cinematic experience," said Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. "With the inclusion of diverse filmmakers, we are not trying to set records but rather to set the record straight by spotlighting the astonishing contributions women and people of color have made to American cinema, despite facing often-overwhelming hurdles."

Each film added in 2020 was selected for its cultural, historic or aesthetic importance to the nation's film heritage, with their induction bringing the total number of movies selected for preservation to 800 (a small fraction of the 1.3 million total films in the Library's overall collection).

TCM will air a television special spotlighting the 2020 inductees Tuesday at 8:00 p.m. See on the full list of movies selected for preservation in the Library of Congress below.

Suspense (1913)
Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914)
Bread (1918)
The Battle of the Century (1927)
With Car and Camera Around the World(1929)
Cabin in the Sky (1943)
Outrage (1950)
The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)
Lilies of the Field (1963)
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Wattstax (1973)
Grease (1978)
The Blues Brothers (1980)
Illusions (1982)
Losing Ground (1982)
The Joy Luck Club (1993)
The Ground series (1993-2001)
The Devil Never Sleeps (1994)
Buena Vista Social Club (1999)
Shrek (2001)
Mauna Kea: Temple Under Siege (2006)
The Dark Knight (2008)
The Hurt Locker (2008)
Freedom Riders (2010)

Related content:

• Shrek: EW review
• The Dark Knight turns 10: EW critics revisit Christopher Nolan's Batman phenomenon
• Amy Tan looks back on The Joy Luck Club, 30 years later — and ahead to a post-Crazy Rich Asians Hollywood