As promised, we bring you the winner of the Vimeo Weekend Project to produce a silent film. Vimeo, the video-hosting site, has these regular weekend competitions inviting new videos to be uploaded on a particular theme, and this time chose silents. The process seems to be a bit confusing, as many just submitted any kind of video in the hope of getting noticed, while others submitted silent but old videos – not surprising, giving the rapid turnaround demanded by the competition.

The winner, above, is Two Knives One Motive by Tyler Capeheart, who says it was written, shot and edited within four hours. It lasts 3mins 19secs. See what you think.

The standard of some of the silents, both those newly produced and some of the older titles submitted, was higher than I’d expected. The video below would probably have got my vote – Guard Duty, by Andrew C, which makes a droll silent comedy pastiche out of the Call of Duty video game (being ignorant of these things I’ve no idea how one makes a new film out of video game software, but clearly this is second nature to some):

And then among the older titles, I was quite struck with Fleeting by Robin Brown, from 2008. It’s longer than usual, just over 15 minutes, and features black-and-white cinematography of a high order. There is engaging use of intertitles early on and some good performances, though I feel the film doesn’t quite know where to go with its theme, and the music is distracting. But it looks so good (the filmmaker says that his influences included F.W. Murnau):

You can find other titles in the Weekend Project section of Vimeo, though there doesn’t seem to be a link I can give you that will only have those films submitted for the competition. Anyway, good to see the several ways in which the art of the silent film continues to inspire.