Daily Archives: September 2, 2007

More on Fflics

September 2, 2007 By in Festivals 4 Comments

Jerry the Troublesome Tyke

Jerry the Troublesome Tyke, from http://www.fflics.co.uk

There’s more information now available on the Fflics Festival of Welsh and Welsh-related silent and sound film, to be held in Aberystwyth, 25-28 October. Here’s the programme:

Thursday 25 October
19.00 Opening Night Gala Celebration –
19.30 How Green Was My Valley (1941) 118 mins

Friday 26 October
10.00 The Proud Valley (1940) 77 mins
10.00 Arthur Cheetham Shorts
12.00 The Silent Village (1943) 36 mins
12.00 William Haggar Shorts
14.00 Jerry the Troublesome Tyke
14.00 The Corn is Green (US, 1946) 118 mins
15.30 The Citadel (1938) 110 mins
17.45 Blue Scar (1949) 90 mins
18.00 Valley of Song (1953) 74 mins
20.00 Dead of Night (1945) 102 mins
20.00 Fame is The Spur (1947) 116 mins

Saturday 27 October
10.00 A Run For Your Money (1949) 85 mins
10.00 Mitchell and Kenyon Shorts and Representations of Welshness – Discussion
11.30 Y Chwarelwr (The Quarryman) (1935) and Yr Etifeddiaeth (The Heritage) (1947-9)
13.45 Noson Lawen and Letter from Wales
14.30 The Shop at Sly Corner (1947)
15.00 The Rat (1925) 74 mins
16.45 The Stars Look Down (1939) 94 mins
17.15 Call of the Blood (France, 1920)
19.30 Next of Kin (1942) 102 mins
19.00 The Life Story of David Lloyd George (1918)

Sunday 28 October
10.00 The Last Days of Dolwyn (1949) 95 mins
11.00 David (1951) 37 mins
13.30 The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) 163 mins

Some corking stuff there. On the silent account, there’s Ivor Novello in Call of the Blood (a French production) and The Rat, the long-lost biopic The Life Story of David Lloyd George (1918), the 1920s Sid Griffiths cartoon series Jerry the Troublesome Tyke, and early shorts by the Welsh film pioneers Arthur Cheetham and William Haggar. Plus the ubiquitous Mitchell and Kenyon and their films of Wales in the 1900s.

And, in the proper spirit of these things, here’s some of that information in Welsh:

Fel rhan o ddathliadau blwyddyn canmlwyddiant Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru, bydd gwyl ffilmiau Fflics yn dangos etifeddiaeth ryfeddol ffilm yng Nghymru.

Bydd yr wyl yn cynnig cymysgedd ddifyr o ffilmiau mud a sain. Ymysg yr uchafbwyntiau bydd Noson Gala Agoriadol gyda dangosiad o brint adferedig o’r ffilm eiconig How Green was my Valley (1941), yn ogystal a dwy ffilm o’r 1920au a fydd yn amlygu dawn Ivor Novello o Gaerdydd, un sêr mwyaf y cyfnod.

Mae uchafbwyntiau eraill yr wyl yn cynnwys Dathliad Gala o’r ffilm The Life Story of David Lloyd George (1918), a fu ar goll am nifer mawr o flynyddoedd ond sydd erbyn hyn yn destun dathlu cenedlaethol. Darperir cyfeiliant piano byw gan Neil Brand, sy’n arbenigo ar gyfeilio i ffilmiau mud.

Bydd Fflics yn canolbwyntio’n benodol ar sinema sydd â chyswllt Cymreig o gyfnod ffilmiau nitrad (1890au hyd 1953). Mae’r cyfnod yma’n cynnwys gwaith arloesol William Haggar, clasuron o Stiwdio Ealing, a hefyd yn dathlu ffimiau glofaol y 1940au a’r 1950au, megis Proud Valley gyda Paul Robeson.

Bydd Fflics yn dirwyn i ben ddydd Sul, 28 Hydref, gyda’r ffilm ryfel feistrolgar The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, â pherfformiad bythgofiadwy gan Roger Livesey yn chwarae’r brif ran.

As ever, there’s more information on the conference website (in both languages).

20,000

September 2, 2007 By in Bioscope, General 3 Comments

The Bioscope has just received its 20,000th visit! It’s been just under eight months in existence, and took the first five to reach the 10,000 mark, so we’re on the up-and-up. Thank you to everyone who reads the outpourings, and do keep on sending me ideas, news and comments.

I thought that to mark the occasion I should point out some of the past posts which have useful reference information, and which have got buried now in the achives, as not everyone may be aware of them:

By far and away the most visited post on The Bioscope has been Searching for Albert Kahn. This is a guide to Autochromes (colour photographs) and the collection of Albert Kahn which featured in the BBC4 series The Wonderful World of Albert Kahn.

There are two posts on the digitisation of newspaper collections worldwide which have materials of value for the study of silent film, Times Past and More Times Past.

There is the eight-part series extracted from a 1912 guide, How to Run a Picture Theatre. Look out for other such series in the future.

There’s the two-part guide to the huge collection of downloadable newsreels, non-fiction and fiction films to be found on the British Pathe site, in British Pathe – part one (the fiction) and British Pathe – part two (the rest). Look out also for Movietone and Henderson, another freely-available newsreel collection – although Movietone was a sound newsreel, the site has a significant early film presence through the remarkable Henderson collection.

There’s a guide to good books on silent cinema, in A Good Read or Two; and a guide to Researching patents, demonstrating what can be found online for free.

Then there are some of my favourite posts: The Silent Worker, on silent films and the deaf; the spectacular Hollywood stage production of Julius Caesar in 1916, described in Shakespeare in the Canyon; the several posts on digitised books such as the 1917 National Council of Public Morals report The Cinema, the Paul McCartney video which uses the Pepper’s Ghost trick, explained in It’s all done with mirrors (well, glass actually); the intrepid war reporter Jessica Borthwick, in A Girl Cinematographer at the Balkan War; thoughts on Martin Scorsese’s wish to save lost films, in Nine out of Ten; discussions of optics coming out of Simon Ing’s book The Eye, in Land and Kinemacolor (the colour experimenter Edwin Land, that is) and The Persistence of Vision; the story of James Joyce’s brief career as a cinema manager, in Visiting the Volta; and the unlikely Croydon pioneer of film achiving, Louis Stanley Jast, whose work is described in Croydon and film archives and The camera as historian.

Plus there’s the Library, FAQs, the latest information on upcoming conferences and festivals, and a Calendar of events. And there are lots of new ideas lined up for the future.