Silent

Thomas A. Edison
Eleven Films (1894-1901)

Edison Kinetoscopic Record of A Sneeze (1894)
IMDb: link
00:07 (1.1 Mb)

Crissie Sheridan (1897)
IMDb: link
00:37 (6.1 Mb)

Giant Coal Dumper (1897)
IMDb: link
00:37 (6.2 Mb)
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Film restored by Filmoteca de la Generalitat Valenciana (Spain)

At a chancery a lawyer helps his female customers, predominantly with his member. Watch how even back in silent-movie times girls expressed themselves freely on camera. By the way, back in those days, women with ‘Rubens’ figures were considered beauty-queens, but the sex was similar to what’s happening today! There’s merry threesomes, lesbian games and a priest off the straight and narrow! Porn-fodder of the rare kind: A movie from 1920!Read More »

Filmreference review
“Critical judgment remains sharply divided on Intolerance, D. W. Griffith’s most expensive and flamboyant spectacle. Those critics who pronounce the film a failure generally point to the four stories, which, they claim, are thematically too diverse to be effectively collated. Taking their cue from Eisenstein’s famous indictment, they argue that the film suffers from purposeless fragmentation and thematic incoherence. Others, notably Vachel Lindsay, Georges Sadoul, Edward Wagenknecht, and more recently Pauline Kael, list Intolerance among the masterworks, stressing its formal complexity, experimental daring, and thematic richness. René Clair, taking a middle position, writes, “it combines extraordinary lyric passages, realism, and psychological detail, with nonsense, vulgarity, and painful sentimentality.”Read More »

Don Druker, Chicago Reader wrote:
One of D.W. Griffith’s most beautiful films, a 1919 tale of the chaste love of a Chinese man (Richard Barthelmess) for the frail daughter (Lillian Gish) of a loutish boxer. It perfectly fuses all the elements of Griffith’s style: tender drama played off against scenes of violence; a rich, operatic sense of character and emotion; and a dreamlike acting style, given particular force by the subtlety of Gish’s performance and the strength of Barthelmess’s.Read More »

Somewhere in Southern Bavaria Xaver wants to marry Gretel, but her father Kohlhiesel wants his elder daughter Liesel to marry first. The problem is, nobody wants to marry her, because she’s too brutal. Seppel suggests, that he should marry Liesel first, get rid of her and then he can marry Gretel…Read More »

Description: “Visual Training” is a short 1969 experimental film from the Netherlands. The film looks so ahead of its time, with its goth makeup and gritty look. I wonder if Marylin Manson or the band the Misfits have ever seen Visual Training? A man and two topless ladies sit at a table and eat. They grotesquely smear food on one another. The one girl is blindfolded and covered with baking powder by the guy. The screen sometimes turns black, as the camera cuts fast between shots. When the camera zooms in on the actor’s face, it looks as if he’s staring right at the viewer. The one girl’s nude body is used as a canvas for body food art. Frans Zwartjes has a created a rare short film that’s unique for viewers. It’s like a mild version of the “Vienna Aktionists” for the surreal at heart.Read More »

“Living (1971), Zwartjes’ own favourite film is the much praised climax of his series Home Sweet Home, in which he explores the rooms of his new house in The Hague. ‘Living has this weird, indefinable atmosphere’, Zwartjes said in an interview. ‘The strange way people move around and the whining music with it…’ The film is a demonstration of Zwartjes’ virtuoso camera work. He plays the main character and at the same time operates the camera, which is hand-held while he films himself. Zwartjes: ‘I was strong as a horse in those days.’ Two persons, Zwartjes and his wife Trix, move aimlessly through the house. Living was filmed with an extremely wide-angle lens (a 5.7) that suggests a powerful atmosphere of alienation.”Read More »

In Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, 108 meter fragments of Der Golem (1914) are preserved. (Original length is 1250 meter.) Among those fragments, 97 meter parts are restored in this DVD. Act 1 scene 39, and somewhere of Act 4 which includes intertitle #32 and #33, with newly created opening title.Read More »

Synopsis:Factory owner Pardon, meets Olga, daughter of clairvoyant Stefanie Lesczynska at a ball. Their brief acquaintance is interrupted when Olga and her mother have to leave. Fifi Hrazánková has her sights set on the elligible Pardon. Pardon asks his Uncle Cyril Ponděliček if the girl could take over his position at work so that she may be dissuaded of her amorous intentions. Fifi seduces Pondělíček. In the meantime, Pardon meets Olga and Stefanie again by chance and offers them a place to stay at Ponděliček’s while Pondělíček passes himself off as Pardon. Ponděliček recognises Stefanie as his former lover, Olga is their daughter. Stefanie also recognises him, but Pondělíček declares that he is the thief named Kanibal whom the newspapers are all writing about. He locks Pardon, Stefanie and Olga in the cellar and, together with Fifi, he escapes. In the inn they happen to come across the real Kanibal who is being pursued by the police. The police mistakenly arrest Pondělíček. Pardon explains to the Police who Pondělíček really is. The real Kanibal is then apprehended. Pondělíček then marries Stefanie and they wish their daughter luck with the factory owner, Pardon. Fifi is thus finally cured of her romantic notions.Read More »