1920s

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Mariann Lewinsky (Il Cinema Ritrovato 2020): “Kashtanka by Olga Preobrazhenskaya, print 1995, a film of winter, of night and snow, of children and animals, a film about loss, a masterpiece”, read my viewing notes from 2012. My Prague colleagues had it screened for me because they knew I was interested in colour in silent cinema, and they knew a tinted Soviet silent film to be a rare item. I had never heard the name of the director. My encounter with her work was enhanced by the shock of discovering that a major director who had reached international audiences with Baby ryazanskie and Tikhiy Don (The Quiet Don) around 1930 could disappear without a trace from official film history. In 2013, Il Cinema Ritrovato dedicated a retrospective to her.” Mariann Lewinsky (Il Cinema Ritrovato 2020)Read More »

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La caméra se promène entre les tables de la Rotonde et surprend une coquette saupoudrant un nez brillant, ou un intellectuel. On y devine le peintre Foujita, la clope élégante, ou Bunuel rêvassant devant les mollets qui dansent, et toute une faune qui hante les trottoirs et rappelle les plus belles heures du foyer intellectuel que fût Montparnasse.Read More »

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This remarkable animation film was first screened by the London Film Society in 1929. Jack Ellitt’s original piano music for Tusalava has unfortunately been lost. The film imagines the beginnings of life on earth. Single-cell creatures evolve into more complex forms of life. Evolution leads to conflict, and two species fight for supremacy. The title is a Samoan word which suggests that things go full circle. In this film Lye based his style of animation partly on the ancient Aboriginal art of Australia. Tusalava is unique as a film example of what art critics describe as “modernist primitivism”. In contrast to the Cubist painters (who were influenced by African art), Lye drew upon traditions of indigenous art from his own region of the world (New Zealand, Australia and Samoa).Read More »

Synopsis:A squadron of American warplanes, armed with gas developed by Corsican chemist Gannimer (dubbed “Napoleon Gas”) flies to Leningrad. American workers inform soviet comrades about the impending catastrophe. But the air attack on the city has already begun, and the assault troops of the enemy capture one suburb of the city after the other. The Red Army is organizing the defense and reflects the attack of the enemy with gas-armed drones

… All these events turn out to be a dream of a girl from Komsomol, who came to the farm to agitate for Aviahim.Read More »

Quote:The film itself is a small wonder to behold. It’s cut in a blazing speed, but at the same time manages to integrate social realities in a documentary style, to mix satire, humor and some artistic lighting, in short it’s one of the glorious late silent era masterpieces and all the more scandalous that it’s completely out of circulation. The story itself is very simple, a lady loses a pearl necklace on the street, an old beggar picks it up, observed by a prostitute who tries to outwit him, while a third younger man out of a job who comes to the beggar’s shack complicates the situation.Read More »

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To celebrate the centenary of Armenian film, we present a new restoration of this neglected silent classic by Hamo Bek-Nazaryan, the founding father of the nation’s cinema. A co-production of the Armenian and Azerbaijani national studios, this historical melodrama recounts the brutal suppression of an oil workers’ strike in pre-revolutionary Baku. Bek-Nazaryan’s mastery of the silent screen is on full display here, from the striking use of close-ups and densely-plotted narrative intrigue to the show-stopping devastation of the finale. Presented with a new score by Juliet MerchantRead More »

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Phantom is a 1922 silent film that was directed by F. W. Murnau the same year Murnau directed Nosferatu. It is an example of German Expressionist film and has a surreal, dreamlike quality.Read More »

PLOT: In the castle Vogeloed, a few aristocrats are awaiting baroness Safferstätt. But first count Oetsch invites himself.. Everyone thinks he murdered his brother, baroness Safferstat’s first husband, three years ago. So he is rather undesirable. But Oetsch stays; arguing he is not the murderer and will find the real one…Read More »

Marc Verdier, a former professor and devout catholic, lives in Jerusalem near the Mount of Olives, with his crippled wife and Septime, his eccentric brother. On his part,Jean-Louis, Marc’s son is in Paris where he continues his studies. Or so he thinks, for, in actual fact, he is the leader of a dangerous anarchist network hiding under the code name of Sirias…Read More »