Monthly Archives: August 2007

A Throw of Dice

August 3, 2007 By in Music, Screenings

Among the many events marking the sixtieth anniversary of the independence of India and Pakistan, there is a screening of Franz Osten’s 1929 Anglo-Indo-German film, A Throw of Dice, on 30 August, at 21.00pm, in Trafalgar Square. Live music will come from the London Symphony Orchestra, playing a new score by Nitin Sawhney.

It certainly sounds like an event to catch, even if the assertion on the India Now website that Franz Osten is “considered by many as one of the most talented directors of all time” will come as a surprise to most. It’s a proficiently told tale from the age of the Maharajahs, the print having come from the BFI National Archive, who approached Sawhney to provide the score. It’s also billed as that curious phenomenon of our times, “a digital restoration”. Osten, a German, made three silent films in India, on historical themes, with funding from the German Emelka studios, The Light of Asia (1926), Shiraz (1928) and A Throw of Dice (1929). They are all beautiful to look at, and stand up well without being particularly astonishing.

There are several other screenings of the film and score lined up, more details of which you can find on the Throw of Dice website. The later screenings are: Oct 26th Sage Gateshead, Oct 27th Bridgewater Hall – Manchester, and Oct 28th Symphony Hall – Birmingham, all with the Northern Sinfonia. A bold initiative, well planned by somebody – go and see it if you can.

Writing the Photoplay

August 2, 2007 By in Publications, Scripts

Lasky Studios

There’s growing interest in the study of silent film screenplays, particularly at the moment in Britain where so few silent film screenplays have survived, which only adds to the challenge. Charles Barr’s work on Eliot Stannard, Hitchcock’s scenarist in the silent era, has been followed by the ongoing research of Ian McDonald at University of Leeds, who is conducting a survey of extant British silent film scripts.

All of which preamble introduces the latest addition to the Bioscope Library, J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds’ Writing the Photoplay, first published 1913 and then in a revised version in 1919. It is the latter that is available from Project Gutenberg.

It is a standard ‘how to’ guide, published by the Home Corresspondence School of Springfield, Mass. (odd how Springfields keep turning up these days), so presumably it ended up being read by those more optimistic than talented. Nevertheless, it says all the right things (“Action is the most important word in the vocabulary of the photoplaywright”), and it goes into great detail about the process of producing a screenplay, covering its component parts, how a script should look, the mechanical production of a film script, devising a scenario, delineating characters, the use and misuse of titles, and how to market a screenplay. There is an example of a completed screenplay, Everybody’s Girl (adapted from an O. Henry story and released by Vitagraph in 1918). There is also some amusing advice on what not to try and include in your screenplay (expensive scenes like the sinking of ships, ‘trick animals’, special costumes), and advice on what not to include in your screenplay owing to the attentions of the censor (“Write as your conscience and a sense of decency as an individual and as a good citizen dictate”).

It’s all sensible stuff, with interesting insights throughout and plenty of incidental comments on the routine of film production that is useful to the researcher now. There are some good photographs on studio production, and Gutenberg have most helpfully provided hyperlinks not only for chapters and illustrations, but for the index at the back. E-books just get better and better. It’s available from Project Gutenberg in HTML (747KB) and plain TXT (624KB).

Films on video and DVD worldwide

August 1, 2007 By in DVD and Blu-Ray, Resources

This is worth knowing about – the Film Search page of the BuechereiWiki site (the site’s in German but the Film Search section is available in English). The site itself appears to be a wiki for library resources.

It’s a remarkable listing of video and DVD sources worldwide, put together by Peter Delin of the Central and Regional Library, Berlin. The list covers Europe, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Scandanavia, Asia, Africa, Latin America, Middle East, South Asia, South-East Asia, East Asia, North America, Australia and New Zealand – plus special areas, including film footage, amateur film, documentaries, experimental films, shorts, and … silents. There are some extraordinary individual resources there, particularly search engines which look across European library collections, which I’ll investigate further and report back. Meanwhile, it’s certainly a page to bookmark.

Strade del Cinema

August 1, 2007 By in Festivals, Music

Fred Frith

It’s a new one on me, but the Strade del Cinema festival is running 6-15 August, at Aosta, Italy. It’s a festival of music and silent film, with extra bits. This year they have a Laurel and Hardy strand, with assorted of their classic silent shorts with intriguing music accompaniment (Two Tars gets to be accompanied by cello, electric bass, electronics and a Japanese koto; You’re Darn Tootin’ is accompanied by a ‘digital performer’). There’s a screening of Pastrone’s Il Fuoco (1916) with live score by avant garde guitarists Marc Ribot and the great Fred Frith, one of my heroes. And there’s Jean Epstein’s La Belle Nivernaise (1923), with vocal accompaniment by Les Grandes Voix Bulgares, which ought to be quite something. There’s also a dramatic piece on Rudolph Valentino, L’Amante de Mondo.

Just time to pop over there, if you’re quick…