Sparrows

Well, here’s another end to the working week, and here’s another edition of the Bioscope newsreel, our weekly round-up of silent matters not otherwise covered by our main posts.

Gypsy Charlie
Charlie Chaplin’s biography has been investigated in immense detail (not least by himself) so one treats the new suggestion that he was born in a gypsy caravan near Birmingham with more than a little scepticism. But a letter in the Chaplin archive at Montreaux claims that this was so. Hmmm. Read more.

Bird’s Eye View
The full programme for London’s Bird’s Eye View film festival has been published, with the usual silent film component, this time around including Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Sparrows and The Wind. The festival takes place 8-17 March. Read more.

Miriam Hansen
There’s a tribute to the late Miriam Hansen, early film theorist extraordinaire, written by her friend Tom Gunning, on the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Read more.

Shot scales
At the dauntingly erudite Research into Film blog (subtitled “An empirical approach to film studies”), Nick Redfern applies the scientific method to studying films. His analysis of shot scales in 1920s French film includes such challenging observations as “The slope of the linear trendline in Figure 1 is -0.0456 (95% CI: -0.0682, -0.0231) and the intercept is 0.3254 (95% CI: 0.2245, 0.4263)”. Memo to self to write a Bioscope post on cinemetrics some time soon. Read more.

Lovesick on Sheppey
It may only be local news (i.e. local to North Kent), but to be honest not much of cultural interest tends to happen on the Isle of Sheppey, so it’s exciting to note that a modern silent film short has been partly shot there. The film is called Lovesick and it’s described as “a silent film about a couple forced to part after one of them develops gills”. Isn’t it always the way? Read more.

‘Til next time!