As she works in her tedious office job, Maria Ivanovna dreams about being married, and she has particular hopes that her co-worker Nikodim Mityushin will take an interest in her. Nikodim, though, is in love with Zina, who sells cigarettes on the sidewalk, and he frequently buys cigarettes from her even though he does not smoke. One day, a film crew uses Zina as an extra in an outdoor scene, and the cameraman, Latugin, falls in love with her. Latugin soon arranges an acting job for Zina. To complicate matters further, Zina has yet another admirer in Oliver MacBride, an American businessman who is visiting Moscow.Read More »
Silent
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Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky – Papirosnitsa ot Mosselproma AKA The Cigarette Girl of Mosselprom (1924)
1921-1930ComedySilentUSSRYuri Zhelyabuzhsky -
Robert Wiene – Orlacs Hände AKA The Hands of Orlac [Murnau Foundation Cut] (1924)
1921-1930AustriaHorrorMysteryRobert Wiene

A world-famous pianist loses both hands in an accident. When new hands are grafted on, he doesn’t know they once belonged to a murderer.Read More »
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Scott Sidney – Tarzan of the Apes (1918)
1911-1920AdventureScott SidneySilentUSA

Reared by a childless ape, the orphaned heir of the Greystokes becomes one of the apes. Then Dr. Porter organizes a rescue expedition, and his beautiful daughter Jane catches his attention. Has Tarzan of the Apes found the perfect mate?Read More »
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Robert F. Hill & Scott Sidney – The Adventures of Tarzan (1921)
1921-1930AdventureRobert F. HillScott SidneySilentUSAWhen Jane is abducted by Arab slave traders, Tarzan comes to her rescue, only to see her kidnapped again by Queen La of Opar. To save Jane, Tarzan must battle both the queen’s minions and William Clayton, who seeks Tarzan’s family title.Read More »
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Giovanni Pastrone – Il fuoco (la favilla – la vampa – la cenere) AKA The Fire (1916)
1911-1920ArthouseGiovanni PastroneItalySilentQuote:
A poor painter, never artistically recognized, meets on the riverside a wealthy young lady. They are both attracted to each other and she invites him to come over to her castle. There they begin an illegal affair (the woman is married to an old grand duke who is absent at that moment). Even when she warns him that their love will be as a big fire, that will be extinguished too quickly, the painter, blinded by passion, accepts. He paints a daring and somewhat manneristic portrait of the woman and sends it to town. At the moment when they read in the newspaper that due to the portrait the painter is finally recognized and praised, the duchess receives a message her husband is returning. Secretly she puts a sleeping powder in the painter’s wine. When he awakes, she is gone and has left him only the money for the painting, that she clearly has bought. Desperately he leaves the castle and wanders around, in search for his beloved. But when he finally encounters her, in company of her husband, she pretends not to know him.Read More » -
Mikhail Doronin – Ikichi khanum AKA Vtoraya Zhena AKA The Second Wife (1927)
1921-1930DramaMikhail DoroninUzbekistan“Cinema, Nation, and Empire in Uzbekistan, 1919-1937” by Cloé Drieu
Quote:
The Second Wife (Rus. Vtoraia Zhena, Uzb. Ikichi khanum) by Mikhail Doronin (Uzbekkino, 1927)Adolat (R. Messerer) lives happily with her mother and father, leading a joyous life alongside her best friend, Qumri, who is later happily married to Umar. But this happiness comes to an end the day she is given in marriage as a second wife to the wealthy merchant Taji Bai (G. Chechelashvili), whose first wife Khadija (M. Grineva) is infertile. After this marriage, Adolat gives birth to a daughter, Saodat (Zh. Voynova).Read More »
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Dziga Vertov – Odinnadtsatyy AKA The Eleventh Year (1927)
1921-1930Dziga VertovPoliticsSilentUSSR

PLOT:
Fired from Sovkino studio after A Sixth Part of the World, Vertov (and his brother-cinematographer Mikhail Kaufman and wife-assistant director Elizaveta Svilova) was soon hired by the All-Ukrainian Photo Cinema Administration. The trio’s first assignment was a documentary celebrating the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution – more or less the same kind of ode-in-pictures as Stride, Soviet! and A Sixth Part of the World. But while the political theme of The Eleventh Year may be orthodox and plain, its photography and editing are daring and complex. In the eyes of a left-wing artist of the twenties, ten years of Socialism was a radical social experiment, and as such, deserved, nay, required to be presented in a radically experimental way.Read More » -
D.W. Griffith – Judith of Bethulia (1914)
1911-1920D.W. GriffithEpicSilentThe Birth of CinemaUSA

Quote:
Judith of Bethulia was a 1914 film and starred Blanche Sweet and Henry B. Walthall, and was produced and directed by D. W. Griffith in 1913. This was the first feature-length film made by pioneering film company Biograph, although the second that Biograph released. Shortly after its completion and a disagreement Griffith had with Biograph executives on making more future feature-length films, Griffith left Biograph, and took the entire stock company with him. Biograph delayed the picture’s release until 1914, after Griffith’s departure, so that it would not have to pay him in a profit-sharing agreement they had.Read More » -
Louis Feuillade – Le pain quotidien AKA Our Daily Bread (1910)
1901-1910DramaFranceLouis FeuilladeSilentA dour ten minutes during which a young woman takes the job a family man. Mostly of interest as a “glimpse of views on women’s emancipation and employment at a time when they were invading the office world as stenographers and typists” (Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi).Read More »




