Originally founded as an anti-censorship organization, protesting New York City Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr.s revocation of moving picture exhibition licenses on Christmas Eve 1908. The mayor believed that the new medium downgraded the morals of the community. To assert their constitutional freedom of expression, theater owners led by Marcus Loew and the top film distributors of the day Edison, Biograph, Pathe and Gaumont joined John Collier ( later the U.S. Commissioner for Indian Affairs ) of the Peoples Institute at Cooper Union and established a National Review committee that endorsed films of merit and championed the new art of the people, which was transforming Americas and soon the worlds -- cultural life. For a full century, almost as long as the art form itself, the National Board of Review has pointed the way to the best in international cinema. The very first film review in the paper of record, the New York Times, was of D. W. Griffiths Pippa Passes ( 1909 ), praises the Board for having an impact on pioneer filmmakers to uplift the art form. Literally thousands of films from 1915 well into the Fifties essentially the era in which movies grew up and developed into a Golden Age of Hollywood bear the legend Passed by the National Board of Review prominently featured in the titles or end credits, reaching audiences the world over, and still visible today and through TV and DVD screenings. The NBR was the first group to champion film as art form, not only through its publication, Films in Review, but our annual awards. The NBR was the only major group to bestow Best Picture awards to Orson Welles Citizen Kane, John Fords The Grapes of Wrath and The Quiet Man, William Wellmans The Ox-Bow Incident, Vittorio DeSicas The Bicycle Thief, Billy Wilders Sunset Boulevard, George Stevens A Place in the Sun, Woody Allens Manhattan and Steven Spielbergs Empire of the Sun. In the past decade, Braveheart, Sling Blade, Good Will Hunting, Life is Beautiful, American Beauty, and No Country for Old Men all won their first awards from the NBR prior to the Oscars, as did Hilary Swank, Julia Roberts, Halle Berry, Jamie Foxx and Sean Penn, Helen Mirren, and Forest Whitaker among others.