Silent

“Cinema, Nation, and Empire in Uzbekistan, 1919-1937” by Cloé Drieu
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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 »

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 »

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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 »

A 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 »

Synopsis: Spies (Spione) was the first independent production of German “thriller” director Fritz Lang. The years-ahead-of-its-time plotline involves Russian espionage activity in London. The mastermind is Haghi (Rudolph Klein-Rogge), a supposedly respectable carnival sideshow entertainer. Heading the good guys is Agent 326 (Willy Fritsch), with the help of defecting Russian spy Sonya (Gerda Maurus). The film moves swiftly to several potential climaxes, each one more exciting than its predecessor. Haghi’s ultimate demise is a superbly staged Pirandellian vignette. Anticipating Citizen Kane by a dozen years, director Lang dispenses with all transitional dissolves and fade-outs, flat-cutting territory from one scene to another. The film was co-scripted by Lang and his then-wife Thea Von Harbou. – Hal Erickson (AMG)Read More »

After he is fired, a real stinker of a servant lets loose his ex-employer’s lions.
Drama ensues and, needless to say, her soirée is ruined.Read More »

Eye Filmmuseum wrote:
A short love story set in prehistoric times. A woman with two suitors shoots the one she doesn’t love with her bow and arrow, hitting him in the heart.Read More »

John Howard Payne leaves home and begins a career in the theater. Despite encouragement from his mother and his sweetheart, Payne begins to lead a life of dissolute habits, and this soon leads to ruin and misery. In deep despair, he thinks of better days, and writes a song that later provides inspiration to several others in their own times of need.Read More »

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Grigorii Grebner and Anatolii Lunacharskii adapted Lunacharskii’s play (based on a story by Prosper Merimee) to the screen. Since it was yet another glaring example of the commercial “line” of the studio Mezhrabpom Rus’, “The Bear’s Wedding” was an odd effort indeed for the Commissar of Enlightenment to be associated with.Read More »