The 25 selections chosen bring the number of films in the registry to 500.

In a statement Billington said, "With this year's list, the registry now includes 500 films and stands as a matchless record of the amazing creativity America has brought to the movies since the early 1890s. Both as a public-awareness tool and as an educational learning aid for students, the registry helps this nation understand the diversity of America's film heritage and, just as importantly, the need for its preservation. The nation has lost about half of the films produced before 1950 and as much as 90 percent of those made before 1920. In addition, more and more nitrate-based and acetate-based films are deteriorating with the passage of time."

One of the 25 films chosen is Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Flower Drum Song," the 1961 movie musical based on the Broadway production of the same name.

The complete list of 2008 selections follows:
"The Asphalt Jungle" (1950)
"Deliverance" (1972)
"Disneyland Dream" (1956)
"A Face in the Crowd" (1957)
"Flower Drum Song" (1961)
"Foolish Wives" (1922)
"Free Radicals" (1979)
"Hallelujah" (1929)
"In Cold Blood" (1967)
"The Invisible Man" (1933)
"Johnny Guitar" (1954)
"The Killers" (1946)
"The March" (1964)
"No Lies" (1973)
"On the Bowery" (1957)
"One Week" (1920)
"The Pawnbroker" (1965)
"The Perils of Pauline" (1914)
"Sergeant York" (1941)
"The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" (1958)
"So's Your Old Man (1926)
"George Stevens WW2 Footage (1943-46)
"The Terminator (1984)
"Water and Power (1989)
"White Fawn's Devotion" (1910)

Under the terms of the National Film Preservation Act, each year the Librarian of Congress names 25 films to the National Film Registry that are "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant, to be preserved for all time. These films are not selected as the "best" American films of all time, but rather as "works of enduring significance to American culture."