Category Archives: Festivals

No laughing matter

May 24, 2011 By in Festivals Tags:

http://www.slapsticon.org

Sad news to relate, but the 2011 Slapsticon festival of rarely seen comedies from the silent and early sound eras has been cancelled. The organisers have provided this note of apologies and explanation:

It is with profound regret that we are announcing the cancellation of Slapsticon 2011 and Slapsticon’s severing of relations with the Artisphere, the new group that replaced the old Arlington County Cultural Affairs this year that had presented the Slapsticon at the Rosslyn Spectrum Theater since 2003.

Unfortunately, disagreements over last-minute contract negotiations forced no further option, and we apologize to all for this inconvenience. We assure you this decision was not made lightly or arbitrarily. Those who have sent in registrations will have their checks returned or payments refunded and if you have questions about registration refunds you can send an email to mgaffen [at] arlingtonva.us or call Maggie Gaffen at 703-228-1841.

We are currently examining other options and offers to move this event, and we’ll let you all know these plans when we’ve made decisions regarding this. We want to thank the fine folk at Arlington County Cultural Affairs for their support of Slapsticon over the last eight years. It is now time to move on.

Let’s hope pastures new are found soon.

The Moon is yellow

May 9, 2011 By in Colour, Fantasy and horror, Festivals, Publications, Restoration Tags: 18 Comments

The colour version of Georges Méliès’ Le voyage dans la lune (1902), from http://www.technicolorfilmfoundation.org

May 11 sees the unveiling at the Cannes Film Festival of what may be the film restoration to beat all other film restorations – the colour version of Georges Méliès‘ Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) (1902). Its recovery is little short of miraculous.

The most iconic of all early films is known to so many, if only for the shot of the rocket going into the Moon’s eye, but no-one since 1902 has seen in its hand-painted colour form (see the Bioscope’s 2008 post Painted by hand for a short history of this early method of colouring films). Méliès was able to supply coloured versions of his films, at double the price of black-and-white, but until 1993 no coloured copy of La voyage dans la lune was known to survive. Then a print was discovered by the Filmoteca de Catalunya in Barcelona among a collection of 200 early films, but unfortunately in a state of total decomposition – or so it was thought.

Lobster Films in Paris learned of the print’s existence and arranged an exchange with the Filmoteca for a lost Segundo de Chomón film in their collection. The deal was done, and Lobster examined their purchase:

Inside, there was a 35mm film on which we could distinguish some of the first film images framed by the small perforations characteristic of early films. Unfortunately, our round reel looked more like a ring of wood, such was the extent to which decomposition had transformed the originally supple film into a rigid, compact mass. We decided to consult several specialist laboratories. Their diagnosis was irrevocable: the copy was lost.

http://www.technicolorfilmfoundation.org

But undaunted, and with great patience, they started to unwind the film frame by frame. They discovered that the images were not stuck to one another – only the sides of the images had decomposed and had melded together. There was a glimmer of hope.

We progressed centimetre by centimetre, taking out entire strips of film at a time but often in small fragments. Sometimes the image had disappeared. It took several weeks to uncover the quasi-totality of the images. The reel, now unwound, was still extremely fragile. In its condition, it was unthinkable that we could use wet-gate step printing, the only technique that would enable the images to be copied again onto a new film before they could be restored. We had two options. Either we tried to give the film back its original flexibility so that it could be duplicated, or we photographed each image using an animation stand, but at the risk of breaking the film.

They decided on the first option, which demanded chemical treatment which would render the film pliable for a period, but which would hasten its decomposition thereafter. The work was undertaken by Haghefilm in the Netherlands, who after months of work managed to transfer around a third of the film onto internegative stock. The remainder of the film could not be copied and was now in a highly brittle state. These remaining 5,000 frames (out of a total of 13,375) were photographed individually in 2000 using a 3M pixel digital camera, work which took a year to complete.

Then they had to wait ten years, for technology to catch up with what was required next and for the money to be put in place to complete the restoration. This came about in 2010 thanks support from the Groupama Gan Foundation for Cinema and the Technicolor Foundation for Cinema Heritage. The film now existed in partial internegative form and in different digital file formats at different resolutions, some digitally scanned from the photochemical restoration, some digital images from the 5,000 individual images, many in an incomplete or broken form. It was a huge organisational challenge, as Technicolor’s Tom Burton explains:

Because the digitization took place over a period of years in different physical locations and different technical environments, utilizing dissimilar gear, the resulting data was not natively organized into a sequentially numbered image order. Each digitization session generated its own naming convention and frame numbering protocol … Several versions of some shots had been created as a result of the separate capture sessions. And due to variations in the specific conditions and equipment used in each digitizing session, the files differed greatly from one another in color, density, size, sharpness and position – it was becoming clear that integrating them into a seamless stream of matching images was to be a challenge of extremely large proportions.

Technicolor sorted out the jigsaw puzzle, re-rendered the files as DPX files, then undertook the process of reconstruction the film with reference to an HDCAM version of a black-and-white print of the film provided by the Méliès family, matching it up frame by frame. Much more then followed to clean, stabilise, grade and render the finished film, filling in colours where these were missing with reference to the use of those colours elsewhere in the film, then time-converting it to the original speed of 14fps. The entire restoration project cost 400,000 euros – for a 14-minute film.

http://www.technicolorfilmfoundation.org

And so we come to 2011 (the 150th anniversary of Georges Méliès’ birth) and the restored film’s presentation at Cannes on May 11. It will be presented with a new soundtrack by the vogue-ish French duo Air. The Technicolor Film Foundation has information on the project on its website, including a truly fabulous 192-page PDF book La couleur retrouvée du Voyage dans la Lune / A Trip to the Moon Back in color, in French and English, on Georges Méliès, his career, his methods, the film and its restoration. It is gorgeously illustrated, and serves as a first-rate guide to the special genius of Méliès. I strongly recommend it. It is free to download (the booklet itself is available at Cannes, but apparently it is not going to be on sale generally). A copy has been placed in the Bioscope Library. All illustrations and quotations in this post come from the book.

The Bioscope will pick up on such reports as it can find about the film’s Cannes screening, and any news of screenings thereafter. It will feature at other festivals, but how widely it will get shown further after that (e.g. if there is to be a DVD or Blu-Ray release) has not been said as yet. However, film, digital cinema and HD release versions have been produced.

http://www.technicolorfilmfoundation.org

This is turning out to be the year of Georges Méliès. As well as the colour restoration of Le voyage dans la lune (1902), this month sees the publication of Matthew Solomon’s book on the film, Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination. Then at the end of 2011 we will have Martin Scorsese’s Hugo Cabret, his adaptation (in 3D) of Brian Selznick’s children’s book The Invention of Hugo Cabret which features Georges Méliès as a central character. Méliès is played by Ben Kingsley, and the cast includes Sacha Baron Cohen, Jude Law, Asa Butterfield and Chloë Moretz. M. Méliès is about to go global.

Bologna 2011

April 26, 2011 By in Festivals Tags: 2 Comments

Conrad Veidt features on the poster for this year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato

Bologna, Italy is home to one of the world’s leading festival of archive and restored films, Il Cinema Ritrovato. The festival always includes a strong representation of silent films, which are enriched all the more for being exhibited alongside films from later periods. This year’s festival takes place 25 June-2 July, and the main themes have been announced. Below are the blurbs supplied so far for those sections with silent films included.

Howard Hawks
After Frank Capra and John Ford, this year’s big retrospective offers up spectacular editions of early works and later masterpieces by Howard Hawks, the genuine auteur of American film, the “great craftsman” whose stature as a maestro was affirmed by Cahiers in the 50s and a person who influenced the creation of the Hollywood myth as much as the same Ford and Hitchcock. Hawks who challenged and transcended every production condition, Hawks friend to Hemingway, Hawks narrator of the most memorable and ambiguous male relationships in film history, Hawks inventor of a powerful new American female archetype, Hawks relentless creator of his own legend, Hawks who in fifty years covered every genre of film without losing his grip on his incomparable style. We will show all Hawks’s silent films available today (Fig Leaves, The Cradle Snatchers, Paid to Love, A Girl in Every Port, Fazil, Trent’s Last Case) and many sound films from the 30s, starting with his first The Dawn Patrol from 1930 to Barbary Coast from 1935, rare flicks such as Criminal Code, The Crowd Roars, Tiger Shark and milestones of gangster movie and screwball comedy genres such as Scarface, Shame of a Nation and Twentieth Century. And that’s not all; we are working on showing Hawks classics that are the height of their genre and continue to be a thrilling visual adventure, from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to The Big Sleep. “The evidence on the screen is the proof of Hawks’s genius” wrote Jacques Rivette in 1953. Watch it, and watch it again.

Conrad Veidt, from Caligari to Casablanca
After years of research, this year’s festival will be the one which finally pays tribute to Conrad Veidt, the great actor of silent German film, the sublime mask of expressionism. The “strange creature” of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari lent his long face with throbbing veins to Wiene, Oswald, Pabst and Leni in various films of the 20s, before leaving Nazi Germany in 1934 and starting an English career that reached its apex with director Michael Powell (The Thief of Baghdad). Veidt’s career and life came to an end in America, where he acted in a few militant anti-Nazi films but is best known for his role as Major Heinrich Strasser, shot dead in the final scene of Casablanca.

Alice Guy: Tribute to a Pioneer of Cinema
Alice Guy Blaché’s story is like no other in the history of moving images: a woman and pioneering filmmaker, Alice was at the forefront of the technological, industrial, and cultural changes that made cinema the new form of mass-media entertainment. From early sound technology, like Gaumont’s Chronophone synchronized sound system, to her American production adventure with Solax (1910-1914), from distribution with the U.S. Amusement Corporation (1916) to feature length films such as The Ocean Waif (1916), Alice Guy participated in every aspect of the evolving motion picture business, adapting to new developments and challenges. Although Alice Guy is most celebrated as the first woman director in film history, this achievement only scratches the surface of her vast accomplishments. She paved the way for women as creative professionals and as powerful agents of economic and social change. Our program features a selection of films produced by Alice Guy’s American company Solax as well as early films she directed at Gaumont and a feature film she made as an independent working in the U.S. industry.

Boris Barnet, Poetic Visions of Everyday Life
Our vast tribute to Boris Barnet spans from early Soviet cinema to the 1960s. Barnet debuted as an actor in the legendary Mister Vest by Kulešov before beginning his career as a director. Refusing to yield to genre formulas, Barnet was all but completely ignored by the mainstream and received off and on criticism. Surrounded by great “revolutionary” filmmakers, the work of this artist faded into the background. Today, however, Barnet is considered one of the most interesting and pioneering directors of classic Soviet film for his narrative style that balances lyricism, irony, spontaneity and drama in a constant dialogue between playground and reality. A view of the world and of humanity that we discover following the “Barnetian” hero from everyday adventures in silent films from the 1920s to Barnet’s final intimist works Alenka (1961) and Polustanok (The Whistle Stop, 1965), interspersed with masterpieces, such as Okraina (The Outskirts, 1933), about the Great War at the turn of the Revolution, and the surreal U samogo sinego morja (By the Bluest of Seas, 1934). Other works include Staryj naezdnik (The Old Jockey), a 1940 comedy that was dear to the director but was banned until 1959, films made during the war between 1941 and 1944, and Podvig razvedčika (Secret Agent, 1947) in which Barnet also acts, admirably playing a German official.

Progetto Chaplin
Here we are pleased to announce some of the programs of the ten year project Progetto Chaplin: Kate Guyonvarch and the author Lisa Stein will present the new biography Syd Chaplin, a unique portrait of Sydney Chaplin’s life and art that also sheds light on unexplored areas of Charlie’s career (the presentation will feature a screening of rare home movies); finally two ‘four-hand’ dossiers: one with Kevin Brownlow dedicated to Eddie Sutherland (director, actor, assistant director to Chaplin in A Woman of Paris and The Gold Rush) also featuring a selection of his silent and sound films; and the other with David Robinson will explore, through the analysis of the archival drafts, Chaplin’s script of The Great Dictator.

Bologna is releasing more information on the festival in advance than is usually the case, which is welcome, and it promises in its next newsletter that there will be information on two further sections, Recovered and Restored, Searching for the color of film and the hardy annual 100 years ago: the films of 1911. Additionally there is a programme strand At the Heart of 20th Century: Socialism between Fear and Utopia, which doesn’t mention any silents, but could conceivably include some, and the evening open-air screenings in the Piazza Maggiore, which will include Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Thief of Bagdad (1940), Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976), and America America by Elia Kazan (1963).

Information on the festival (in Italian and English), including locations, hotels and extensive details of past festivals are available on the Il Cinema Ritrovato site. And we’ll have more on the colour and 1911 programmes as and when they appear.

Slapsticon 2011

April 10, 2011 By in Comedy, Festivals Tags:

Preview trailer for Slapsticon 2011

Slapsticon, the annual festival of rarely seen comedies from the silent and early sound eras, returns to the Rossyln Spectrum Theatre, Arlington VA 15-18 July 2011. Last year the festival made headlines around the world with the amazing rediscovery of a lost Chaplin film, A Thief Catcher. It may not be every year that they are able to repeat such a coup, but once again the organisers have come up with a programme rich in treasures and rarities. Here’s the programme so far:

Thursday July 14, 2011

12:00 pm — Spectrum Doors Open

1:00 pm

* To Be Announced

3:00 pm — Weiss-O-Roni III and Other Stuff

* Seeing Things (1928) — Ben Turpin
* Sock and Run (1928) — Snub Pollard, Marvin Loback

5:00 pm&ndash7:00 pm — Dinner Break

7:00 pm — Marx Brothers Rarities

9:00 pm

* Father’s Close Shave (1920) — Johnny Ray, Laura LaPlante
* Bringing Up Father (1946) — Joe Yule Sr., René Riano

Friday July 15, 2011

8:00 am — Spectrum Doors Open

9:00 am — Early Comedies:

* A Charming Villain (1916) — Smiling Billy Mason, Madge Kirby
* Ham Among the Redskins (1916) — Ham and Bud
* Her Anniversaries (1917) — Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew
* Local Showers (1916) — Musty Suffer
* The Child Needs a Mother (1916) — Fatty Voss
* Honeymooning (1919) — Mr. and Mrs. Carter DeHaven
* Risks and Roughnecks (1917) — Larry Semon
* Faint Heart and Fair Lady (1917) — Victor Moore
* Cupid’s Hold Up (1919) — Bobby Vernon

11:00 am — Kids ‘N’ Animals

* The Home Wreckers (1925) — Hey Fellas
* No Children (1929) — Smitty Comedy
* Young Sherlocks (1922) — Our Gang
* Mickey’s Tent Show (1933) — Mickey McGuire

12:30 pm–2:00 pm — Lunch Break

2:00pm — Hal Roach Comedies

* Follow the Crowd (1918) — Harold Lloyd
* All in a Day (1920) — Snub Pollard
* Are Parents Pickles? (1925) — Paul Parrott
* Never Too Old (1926) — All-Star with Claude Gillingwater
* Girl Shock (1930) — Charley Chase

4:00 pm — Rob Stone Rarities

6:00 pm–8 pm — Dinner Break

8:00 pm

* Dynamite (1919) — Lloyd Hamilton
* Silent Feature to be announced

10:00 pm

* War, Italian Style (1967) — Buster Keaton

Saturday July 16, 2011

8:00am — Spectrum Doors Open

9:00 am — Dave Snyder’s Cartoon Show

10:30 am — The Sennett Spot

* On His Wedding Day (1912) — Ford Sterling, Dot Farley
* The Great Toe Mystery (1914) — Charley Chase, Alice Howell
* A Janitor’s Wife’s Temptation (1915)
* Won by a Fowl (1917) — Paddy McGuire, Fritz Schade
* His One Night Stand (1917) — Harry McCoy
* Keystone Girls Open Trout Season (1917)
* What Happened to Mrs. Jones? (1917) — F. Richard Jones
* Galloping Bungalows (1924) — Billy Bevan, Sid Smith
* Matchplay (1930) — Andy Clyde

12:30 pm–2:00 pm — Lunch Break

2:00 pm — David Wyatt Rarities

* Moonshine (1921) — Lloyd Hamilton

4:00 pm

* April Fool (1921) — Lloyd Hamilton
* Professor Beware (1938) — Harold Lloyd

6:00 pm–8 pm — Dinner Break

8:00 pm — Chaplin Rarities

* The Simp (1920) — Lloyd Hamilton
* Red Hot Tires (1925) — Monte Blue, Patsy Ruth Miller

10:00 pm — A Columbia Conglomeration

* Blitz on the Fritz (1943) — Harry Langdon
* Many Sappy Returns (1938) — Charley Chase
* Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1935) — Andy Clyde
* One Too Many (1934) — Leon Errol

Sunday July 17, 2011

9:00 am — Spectrum Doors Open

10:00 am — More Talkie Comedies

* Idle Roomers (1931) — Cameo comedy Directed by Roscoe Arbuckle
* Thanks Again (1931) — Edgar Kennedy
* Blonde Bomber (1936) — Harry Gribbon, Shemp Howard
* Free Rent (1936) — Monty Collins, Tom Kennedy

12:00pm–1:30 pm — Lunch Break

1:30 pm

* The Battling Orioles (1924) — Glenn Tryon
* Queen of Aces (1925) — Wanda Riley
* Misfit Sailor (1926) — Billy Dooley
* Swiss Movements (1926) — Jimmie Adams

3:30 pm — Ones for the Road

* Who’s Afraid? (1927) — Lupino Lane
* Short Kilts (1924) — Stan Laurel
* High Society (1924) — Our Gang

Plus a few surprises, then it’s back to the Holiday Inn Rooftop Restaurant for a good meal, a few drinks, a few more drinks, some fond farewells, a few more drinks, some more fond farewells, a few more drinks, some fonder farewells, a few more drinks, some less fond farewells, a few more drinks, perhaps a fistfight or two, a few more drinks, then a fond passing into unconsciousness …

Clesrly a festival conducted in just the right spirit. Details on registration, accommodation, musical accompaniment and more, are available from the festival site.

The O’Kalems

March 26, 2011 By in Festivals, Filmographies, Production Tags: 6 Comments

Trailer for Blazing the Trail

Blazing the Trail is the title of a new documentary about the New York film company Kalem in Ireland. Kalem was founded in 1907 by George Kleine, Samuel Long and Frank Marion (K-L-M, see?). One of the major American film producers of the silent period, one of their directors, Sidney Olcott, was of Irish descent, and he took a company of players to Ireland in 1910.

Basing themselves in Co. Kerry, the company shot fiction films with strong Irish themes and extensive use of Irish locations. Initially they made The Lad from Old Ireland (1910) [extant] plus a number of travel and scenic films. Such was the success of the fiction film that Olcott returned with a larger company the following year. Among the performers were Gene Gauntier (lead actress and scenarist), Robert Vignola, Jack P. McGowran and Alice Hollister. For this second phase they settled in the village of Beaufort and made the following fiction films (as well some non-fiction) (links are to their entries on the Irish Film & TV Research Online database):

It is generally argued that the object was to make films that would appeal to the Irish-American audience in America, though the films were just as much intended for the general audience. Nevertheless, they made for a distinctive body of work with strong themes of nation, history and landscape, earning them the nickname the O’Kalems. Olcott and Gauntier returned to Ireland in 1913 after leaving Kalem with the Gene Gauntier Feature Players, then Olcott came back again in 1914, hoping to set up a permament studio at Beaufort. The First World War intervened, and this enterprising chapter in Irish (or Irish-American) film history came to a close.

The Gene Gauntier Feature Players made this titles in Ireland:

Sidney Olcott made two further films in Ireland in 1914, released by Lubin:

The films and their story have long attracted interest, for their position in Irish film and for their romantic nationalism. The latest such is Blazing the Trail, written and directed by American academic Peter Flynn, an 86-minute documentary which takes its title from Gene Gauntier’s series of autobiographical articles written for Woman’s Home Companion in 1928/29. It has been produced in conjunction with the Irish Film Institute and is to be released on DVD this summer together with all extant Kalem Irish films. The film is screening tomorrow at the Boston Irish Film Festival (of which Flynn is co-founder and co-director) and recently opened the Killruddery Film Festival. The Boston website has background information on the film, a trailer (see above) and sample clips.

Kalem’s Rory O’More (1911), which tells of Irishman O’More at the time of the 1798 rebellion, pursued by British soldiers. From Irish Film & TV Research Online

Gene Gauntier’s series of autobiographical articles (or at least the first seven) is available from The Silent Bookshelf.

There is a website dedicated to Sidney Olcott – please note it is in French.

On silent film in Ireland generally, see Denis Condon’s Early Irish Cinema 1895-1921.

Bioscope Newsreel no. 17

March 18, 2011 By in DVD and Blu-Ray, Festivals, Modern silents, Newsreel Tags: 1 Comment

From http://www.ebk-ink.com/tsff/home.html

How can it be Friday again? Where are the days going to? Has there been any news? – I mean silent news of course, news of the inconsequential, non-life-threatening kind. Well, here’s some.

Sound of Silent Film Festival
Chicago’s Sound of Silent Film Festival describes itself “the only film festival that features modern silent films screened to live music, composed especially for the films by Chicago composers”. The festival includes works by Martin Scorsese (his bloody 1967 short film The Big Shave), Gus Van Sant, Manoel de Oliveira (the only living director to have made a silent film the first time around), Manga creator Osama Tezuka and a horror comedy created especially for the festival, which takes place April 1-3 at the Chopin Theatre. Read more.

Dante on DVD
Early Italian filmmakers loved the classics and loved spectacle. Both come together in L’inferno (1911), one of several bold attempts to put Dante on screen, notorious for its nudity, acclaimed for its Doré-inspired visual imagination and ingenious effects. It has been released on DVD by the Cineteca Bologna’s as part of its Cento anni fa series. An earlier DVD release had a score by Tangerine Dream which dividied opinion; this release comes with ambient sounds composed by Edison Studio and a piano score by Marco Dalpane. Read more.

Festival du film muet
Switzerland’s silent film festival (every country should have one) takes place in Servion, 24-27 March. Foolish Wives, Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, Swiss title Der Bergführer, and Seven Chances are the films on show. Read more.

Toronto goes to hell
And there’s another silent film festival, this time in Toronto, taking place 30 March-7 April. Now in its second year, festival highlights include another Italian vision of hell, Maciste all’Inferno (1926), King Vidor’s The Jack Knife Man (1920), Clara Bow in It (1927), and – from the infernal regions once more – F.W. Murnau’s Faust (1927). Read more.

‘Til next time!

Bioscope Newsreel no. 15

March 4, 2011 By in DVD and Blu-Ray, Festivals, Newsreel, Online videos, People, Performers, Technology Tags: 5 Comments

Photograph taken filming of Hide and Seek, Detectives (1918): (L-R) unknown, Tom Kennedy, Ben Turpin, Charles ‘Heinie’ Conklin, Eddie Cline, and Marie Prevost. From Steve Rydzewski (see http://www.flickr.com/photos/wiggleyears)

Behind the scenes the Bioscope is toiling away at two or three major posts, which always take a while to research, but in the meantime here’s your regular Friday round-up of some interesting (we hope) news snippets on silent film and such like.

Cinefest 31
Syracuse’s annual convention of silent and early sound film takes place 17-20 March. Among the auctions and dealers’ tables you can see Lonesome, What Price Glory? (1927), Happiness (1917), The Hushed Hour (1919), Mannequin (1926), and much more. Read more.

National Inventors Hall of Fame
Stephen Herbert’s estimable Muy Blog (on Eadweard Muybridge) reports on the National Inventors Hall of Fame inductees for 2011. They include some major names from the worlds of photography and early film: Thomas Armat (1866-1948), for his motion picture projector, Hannibal Goodwin (1822-1900), for discovering transparent flexible nitrocellulose film, Frederick Ives (1856-1937), for innovation in colour photography, Charles F. Jenkins (1867-1934), for the projector he developed with Armat, and Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904), for stop action photography. Read more.

The Great White Blu-Ray
The British Film Institute much acclaimed restoration of Herbert Ponting’s The Great White Silence (1924), will get a Blu-Ray and DVD release in June. The film documents Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s failed attempt to be first to the South Pole. It’s also the first British silent film to make it to Blu-Ray. The dual-format package will include the 1933 re-edited sound version of Ponting’s film, Ninety Degrees South. Read more.

The Marie Prevost Project
Stacia Jones at the excellent and supremely well-named She Blogged by Night has been surveying the career of Marie Prevost in a series of posts. Her trawl through Prevost’s many lost films from the late teens brings up a marvellous array of photographs, posters, lobby cards and slides for the actress who went from Mack Sennett bathing beauty to 1920s stardom to a wretched end in the 1930s. Read more.

The hipster YouTube
Fortune magazine looks into the success story that is Vimeo, the online video site that just does everything right – and apparently invented the ‘like’ button. Proof that you can succeed in online video without recourse to theft, negativity or skateboarding dogs. Read more.

‘Til next time!

Bioscope Newsreel no. 13

February 18, 2011 By in Festivals, Modern silents, Newsreel Tags:

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!

Bioscope Newsreel no. 12

February 11, 2011 By in Archives and museums, Criticism and theory, Festivals, Filmmakers, Newsreel, Obituaries Tags: 4 Comments

People on Sunday (Menschen am Sonntag)

Killruddery Film Festival
Ireland’s Killruddery Film Festival, with its strong emphasis on silent film, returns 10-13 March 2011 and the programme has just been announced. Highlights include The O’Kalems in Ireland, La Roue, White Shadows in the South Seas, 7th Heaven, Early Masterpieces of the Avant Garde, The Garden of Eden, Regeneration, People on Sunday and Ireland’s Other Silent Film Heritage (the Irish in Early Hollywood), an illustrated lecture by Kevin Brownlow. Read more.

Kansas Silent Film Festival
The annual Kansas Silent Film Festival takes place 25-27 February 2011. Highlights include David Shepard speaking on Chaplin at Keystone, Speedy, Chang, The Circus, The Last Command, A Thief Catcher, 7th Heaven and Wings. Special guest will be Harold lloyd expert Annette D’Agonstino Llloyd. Read more.

Q&A with film scholar Frank Kessler
On Cinespect, there’s a thoughtful interview with Frank Kessler, early film historian, sometime Bioscope contributor, and all round good chap, discussing issues in media historiography and the trick film by way of Christian Metz and Georges Méliès. Read more.

How to be a motion picture director
Dan North’s rather fine Spectacular Attractions blog offers unusual advice from Marshall Neilan in 1925 on how to be a motion picture director. “How should a director act in public?” “Like a nut or like an owl. Both methods have proved successful. By no means act normal”. Read more.

BBC permanent
It hasn’t much to do with silent films, but the BBC’s quiet announcement of a change in the Service Licence for its TV channel BBC4 and radio channels Radio 3 and Radio 4 is highly significant for access to audio-visual archives online. All three will now all have the the ability to offer programming on-demand for an unlimited period after broadcast, instead of the limited period at present. This is the start of something big – the permanent online archive for broadcast content. Keep watching. Read more.

‘Til next time.

Hippodrome Festival of Silent Cinema

February 1, 2011 By in Festivals Tags:

http://www.falkirk.gov.uk/silentcinemafest

Scotland’s first silent film festival takes place 18-20 March 2011 in Scotland’s first purpose-built cinema (or so it says in their brochure), at the Hippodrome cinema in Bo’ness. The enterprising weekend of silents and silent-related events is clearly directed at a general audience, and brings together classics with Scottish Screen Archive programmes, workshops and live events. There are chances to dress up as flappers or Chaplin, and a great idea of bringing along jamjars (used as currency by children keen to get into early film shows) to the screening of The Kid. At the heart of it all is pianist, raconteur and all round good egg Neil Brand, once again carrying the torch for silent films.

Here’s the main programme, with text taken from the online brochure:

Opening Night Gala: It
Celebrate Festival opening night with a glass of bubbly and an icon of the Roaring Twenties. Clara Bow stars in this sparkling comedy as Betty, a poor shop-girl, who sets her cap at her handsome new boss whilst seeing off moral reformers, inept suitors and upperclass snobs with a wicked smile and a devastating wink. She has ‘it’ by the bucket-load, and knows exactly how to use ‘it’ … Fast, jazzy and funny ‘It’ magnificently demonstrates Bow’s star-appeal (receiving over 45,000 fan letters a week at the time), and why her performance as a guileless flapper came to define an entire decade. Look out for a young Gary Cooper as the dashing cub reporter. We are privileged to present this rare UK screening of a print loaned by the British Film Institute’s National Archive… the perfect start to a very special festival.
Dir. Clarence G. Badger, Josef von Sternberg / US / 1927 / b&w / 1h 12m
With: Clara Bow, Antonio Moreno, William Austin
Live piano accompaniment by Neil Brand
Friday 18 March, 18:30 • screening starts 19:30
Tickets: £8 (£6 conc.) including ‘champagne reception’
Dress: Twenties glamour, flapper

Tam O’Shanter
A unique and immersive workshop for schools and home educators presented by musician Susan Appelbe and Falkirk Council Heritage Learning team. Susan performs her vibrant music to a new, silent animation of Robert Burns’ poem (created by Grangemouth Girls Youth Group with artist Emma Bowen). Susan’s live performance is followed by an improvised music session in which the whole audience becomes the orchestra, composing its own soundtrack for the animation, recorded for pupils to take back to school. All pupils will be supplied with instruments for the duration of the workshop, and are also welcome to bring any acoustic instruments of their own. No prior musical skills required.
Friday 18 March, 10:00 / 2hrs
Tickets: pupils £2.10, accompanying teachers/adults free
Pre-booking essential
Schools workshop – Recommended P6 / People in the Past / Expressive Arts / Literacy

An Escape From Reality
If walls could talk, the Hippodrome could certainly tell a tale or two. Come for a cuppa and hear the stories of Scotland’s first purpose-built cinema or share your own cinema-going memories with your host, local author and scriptwriter Janet Paisley. Following a screening of ‘An Escape from Reality’, a documentary made by Bo’ness Academy students celebrating the Hippodrome through the memories of its patrons, Janet will be joined by local historians and the floor will be open for what promises to be an entertaining afternoon.

This event is sponsored by the Bo’ness Townscape Heritage Initiative (THI). The aim of the THI is to repair and restore historic buildings like the beautifully restored Hippodrome, encouraging town centre regeneration through the distribution of Heritage Lottery Funding.
Fri 18 Mar 14:00 / 1h 30m approx.
Tickets: £5.25 (incl. refreshments)

The Kid + shorts (2-for-1 Jeely Jar Special)
In the Hippodrome’s heyday youngsters could get their cinema ticket in exchange for a jeely (or jam) jar, so we’ve named our regular Saturday morning screenings of well-loved family films in honour of this tradition. Once a season we revive the custom at a Jeely Jar Special, when you can bring a clean jeely jar with matching lid and get two tickets for the price of one. We’ve chosen Chaplin’s first feature film in which the loveable Tramp teams up with an abandoned child showcasing Chaplin’s seemingly effortless combination of pathos and pantomimic comedy. Screening with animated shorts featuring Felix the Cat – celebrated US
predecessor of Mickey Mouse – and his mischievous British equivalent, Bonzo the Dog. Come dressed as the Tramp to be in with a chance to win our Charlie Chaplin fancy dress competition!
Dir. Charles Chaplin / US / 1921 / b&w / pre-recorded orchestral score
‘Felix Wins and Loses’ / dir. Pat Sulllivan / US / 1925 / b&w
‘Bonzo Broadcasted’ / dir. W.A. Ward / UK / 1925 / b&w
Live piano accompaniment by Neil Brand (animation shorts only)
Saturday 19 March, 11:00 • Tickets: £2.10 / 1h 30m approx

Scottish Screen Archive & Cinema Theatres Association Event
Early Cinema in Scotland
Come and find out about the origins of early film and cinema at this enlightening and entertaining illustrated talk including stills and film screenings presented by cinema historian, Gordon Barr and Ruth Washbrook, a curator at the Scottish Screen Archive. Take a journey back in time through celluloid history to discover how and when Scotland’s first purpose-built cinemas were constructed, how cinema architecture and styles changed over time and experience some of the films early audiences would have enjoyed.
Saturday 19 March, 14:00 / 1h 30m approx
Tickets: £5.25 (£4 conc.)

Another Fine Mess with Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy never age, and these films prove they were at the peak of their careers before sound even arrived – action-packed, terrifying and masterly, these are the boys’ greatest silent films. Liberty, in which the pair are escaped convicts trying to reclaim their trousers. Big Business, where the duo’s business transaction with a customer (played by local Larbert lad James Finlayson), winds up with their trademark outbreak of destruction. Finally You’re Darn Tootin’ which finds Laurel and Hardy dismissed from a band and attempting to make ends meet as street musicians … where, of course, rumpus ensues. Prepare to laugh harder then you ever have before. Oh, and be prepared to ‘play along’!
Dir. Various / US / 1928-29 / b&w
Live piano accompaniment by Neil Brand (assisted by the audience!)
Saturday 19th March, 16:30 / 1h 30m • Tickets: £5.25 (£4 conc.)

Neil Brand – The Silent Pianist Speaks
The Hippodrome is proud to welcome Neil Brand to present his critically acclaimed live show. Using clips from some of the greatest moments in silent cinema to illustrate his 25-year career, Neil hosts a unique and memorable event celebrating the great silent filmmakers and the magic of the accompanists who breathed life and sound into their work. From the earliest, earthiest comedies and thrillers, through a silent cine-verité classic shot by a young Billy Wilder, to the glories of Hollywood glamour and the sublime Laurel and Hardy, Neil provides improv accompaniment and entertaining commentary including notes from his own live cinema disasters. The audience gets a chance to score a scene and the evening culminates in Neil accompanying a clip “sight unseen” whilst simultaneously describing his reactions to it. The result is a hilarious, sharp and ultimately moving show about cinema and music which pays tribute to the musicians of the silent era through the observations of one the world’s finest exponents.
Saturday 19 March, 19:30 / 1h 20m • Tickets: £8 (£6 conc.)

Slapstick with Plutôt la Vie
From Buster Keaton to Mr Bean, follow a comic tradition and learn some slapstick secrets. The early heroes of comedy relied on visual gags for their biggest laughs and this ancient form of comedy came into its own during the silent era, but can still be seen in modern cinema and theatre. The performance of slapstick comedy requires exquisite timing and skilful execution so join Tim Licata of acclaimed Scottish theatre company Plutôt la Vie (literally meaning “above all, is life”) as he teaches you some of the slapstick secrets of the silent stars.
Venue: Bo’ness Town Hall, Stewart Avenue, Bo’ness EH51 9NJ
Wear comfortable clothes/shoes
Sunday 20 March, 10:00 / 2h 30m • Tickets: £8
Age: 12+ pre booking essential
Note: Plutôt la Vie’s will be performing their fast and funny
family show: ‘By the Seat of Your Pants’at FTH on
Sunday 13 March • 14:00 • http://www.falkirk.gov.uk/cultural

The Scottish Screen Archive Presents…
Scottish Comedy Capers
Enjoy a wonderful treat of silent comedy films from the Scottish Screen Archive with a specially curated programme of short films ranging from early comedy favourites to amateur comedy dramas and films made by Cine Societies and Film Clubs. This diverse collection of films will leave you laughing with uncouth Highlanders, pantomime horses, crazed lawnmowers, cantankerous witches, naughty children and husbands causing mischief on a weekend away from their wives. There is something for everyone in this fun-packed programme of Scottish archive film delights.
Live piano accompaniment by Neil Brand
Sunday 20 March, 11:00 / 1h 30m approx
Tickets: £5.25 (£4 conc.)

World Première
New Found Sound
Take four young composers, three talented schools orchestras, a silent film from the Scottish Screen Archive – and you get New Found Sound. A culmination of hard work and creativity, New Found Sound offers a unique opportunity to experience the world première of a silent film soundtrack commissioned by the Hippodrome Festival of Silent Cinema. The music has been composed by pupils from the Falkirk Council area and will be performed by young musicians in the regional school orchestras: the Falkirk Schools Orchestra, the Falkirk Schools Wind Band, and the Falkirk Baroque Ensemble. Involving secondary school pupils currently studying music and receiving instrumental instruction, New Found Sound showcases the outstanding talent and commitment of young people in the region.
Sunday 20 March, 14:00 / 1h approx
Tickets : £4 (£3 conc.)

Sherlock Jr. + Never Weaken
No self-respecting silent film festival could ignore two of the era’s biggest stars, so here’s a double bill that offers twice the genius for more than double the value. Buster Keaton stars as a humble movie projectionist living out his dream as “the world’s greatest detective”: ‘Sherlock Jr’. The film not only brought Keaton to his artistic maturity, it influenced the structure of Monty Python, according to Terry Gilliam. The last twenty minutes is an anarchic firestorm of stunts and physical gags, while the surreal central sequence, in which Buster walks into an onscreen drama which changes around him, is still as breathtaking as it was 85 years ago. Plus, Harold Lloyd, the lovelorn hero of ‘Never Weaken’ and real-life vertigosufferer, goes all-out to show that there is nothing funnier than a man in glasses whose life hangs by a thread thirty storeys up!
‘Sherlock Jr.’: Dir. Buster Keaton / US / 1924 / b&w / 45m
With: Buster Keaton, Kathryn McGuire, Ward Crane
‘Never Weaken’: Dir. Fred C Newmeyer / US / 1921 / b&w / 29m
With: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Roy Brooks
Live piano accompaniment by Neil Brand
Sunday 20 March, 16:30 / 1h 20m approx • Tickets: £5.25 (£4 conc.)

Closing Night Gala: Nosferatu
This screening of F. W. Murnau’s silent classic horror film with live music accompaniment is the dramatic finale of the Hippodrome Festival of Silent Cinema. Max Schreck is the terrifying Count Orlok, a vampire who thirsts after the body and soul of a young clerk and his beautiful wife. David Allison’s beguiling score reveals a distinctly Celtic twist with its Scottish voice depicting the nineteenth century author Emily Gerard leading us through the narrative. Originally from Airdrie, Gerard is believed to have been a major influence on Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ and Murnau’s celluloid portrayal through her writings on Transylvanian folklore. Fans of the modern slew of on-screen vampires will recognise the sensuality, immortality and suspense in ‘Nosferatu’, the genesis of bloodsucking horror on the big screen. “A stunning presentation.” Edinburgh Evening News
Dir. F. W. Murnau / US / 1922 / b&w / 1h 24m
With: Max Schreck, Gustav von Wangenheim, Greta Schröder
Live musical accompaniment by David Allison of The Island Tapes
Sunday 20 March, 19:30
Tickets: £8 (£6 conc.)

Well, there’s bucket-loads of enthusiasm, and I hope they are rewarded with good audiences. The festival is now open for bookings, and there are full details of how to get there and how to have the best of times once you have done so on the festival site.