Category Archives: Newsreel

Bioscope Newsreel no. 6

September 12, 2008 By in Cities, DVD and Blu-Ray, Fantasy and horror, Festivals, Music, Newsreel Tags:

Silents at the LFF
The London Film Festival takes place 15-30 October, and a number of silents are included in the ‘Treasures from the Archives’ strand: Fedor Ozep’s The Living Corpse (1928-29), Douglas Fairbanks in A Modern Musketeer (1917) paired with Max Davidson in the immortal Pass the Gravy (1928), and William Desmond Taylor’s The Soul of Youth (1920). Read more.

London Loves
Part of the London Film Festival is London Loves, a repeat of last year’s hugely successful open-air screenings of silents and archive films in Trafalgar Square. On 23 October Maurice Elvey’s High Treason (1929), paired with Gaston Quiribet’s The Fugitive Futurist (1925), each provide a science fiction vision of London, with live piano accompaniment by Neil Brand. On 24 October, London Loves… is a collection of silent and sound archive films on London, from travelogues to home movies. Read more.

New DVDs from Kino
Kino International has announced two major forthcoming silent DVDs. A ‘restored deluxe edition’ of The Last Laugh is released on 30 September; and a two-disc deluxe release, The General: The Ulimate Edition, in a high-definition video transfer, with a choice of three music scores. It’s released on 11 November 2008. Read more.

Big Bang at the ICA
On 28 September the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London is holding a one-day interactive music workshop and performance with silent films, organised by Big Bang Lab (an initiative formed by composer Sergio López Figueroa). Budding silent musicians are invited to bring along their acoustic instruments (or voices) to a workshop putting music to two contemporary silent works, followed by a programme of silents including Un Chien Andalou. Read more (PDF file).

‘Til next time!

Bioscope Newsreel no. 5

July 31, 2008 By in Comedy, Events, Festivals, Newsreel, Publications

Merton on the road again
Following its hugely successful tour of the UK in 2008, Paul Merton’s Silent Clowns show, with accompanist Neil Brand, will be hitting the road again in Spring 2009. Merton and Brand will be giving eight shows at the Edinburgh fringe festival 8-16 August. Read more.

Silents in Shasta County
The Shasta County Arts Council of Redding, California, is holding its annual silent film festival, 24-25 October. Highlights include Metropolis, Blackmail and Peter Pan with actors reading out the intertitles to make the show more child-friendly. Read more.

A course in slapstick
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, is holding a course over five Wednesday, November-December on slapstick, entitled ‘Cruel and Unusual Comedy: Social Commentary in the American Slapstick Film’. The instructors are Ron Magliozzi, Steve Massa and Ben Model, who also provides the music. Read more.

Singing the silents
Published in paperback this month is Ken Wlaschin’s The Silent Cinema in Song, 1896-1929: An Illustrated History and Catalog of Songs Inspired by the Movies and Stars, with a List of Recordings. It is the history of the response of popular song to the silent cinema, with information on availability of recordings. Read more.

‘Til next time!

Bioscope Newsreel no. 4

July 20, 2008 By in Asian cinema, Black cinema, Images, Modern silents, Newsreel, Theatre

The Sport of the Gods
The US Postal Service has issued a series of stamps celebrating African-American performers in early (i.e. pre-1950) films. The titles chosen are each represented by posters and include the 1921 all-black cast The Sport of the Gods, directed by Henry J. Vernot and starring Elizabeth Boyer and Edward R. Abrams. Read more.

Shakespeare goes Hollywood
Director Scott Palmer and the theatrical company Bag & Baggage Productions are putting on a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that is set in the world of silent-era Hollywood. Chaplin, Lloyd, Valentino, Theda Bara and Louise Brooks are all referenced, while Puck echoes Murnau’s Nosferatu. The production is being put on for Oregon State University’s Bard in the Quad at Corvallis. Read more.

Telegu silent once more
Telugu comedy actor Brahmanandam, who is recorded in the Guinness Book of Records for having appeared in the most number of films in a single language, is to star in a silent film, which is reckoned will be the first Indian silent commercial feature film since the classic Pushpak. The film, Brahmanandam Drama Company, is a Telegu remake of the 2006 Hindi film Bhagam Bhag. Read more.

‘Til next time!

Bioscope Newsreel no. 3

June 6, 2008 By in Newsreel 9 Comments

Silent films and bedroom painting
Such is the title of an unlikely combination of 1910s non-fiction films and an exhibition of recent abstract paintings. Together they make up an exhibition at the Lab at Belmar, in Lakewood, Colorado. Silent Films features a continuous programme of travelogue, scientific and industrial films on three side-by-side screens, placing them outside of their historical context and highlighting their beauty and mystery. Learn more

Between the Devil and the deep blue sea
On stage at the Studio, Sydney Opera House, 17-28 June is Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, a fusion of theatre and silent film by British theatre company 1927, who take their name from the year of The Jazz Singer. The show was a hit at last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and comprises ten ‘fractured fairy tales’ by writer, director and performer Suzanne Andrade, with animated sequences by Paul Barritt. Learn more

And finally…
Canadian experimental filmmaker Deco Dawson is enjoying a retrospective of his work. Inspired by silent films like his fellow Canadian Guy Maddin, Deco says, “What I appreciated about those early silent films is they really didn’t know how to make movies yet …” The Bioscope despairs. Learn more (if you must)

‘Til next time!

Bioscope Newsreel no. 2

May 15, 2008 By in Newsreel 2 Comments

The life of a vampire
The first biography of Max Schreck, cadaverous star of F.W. Murnau’s Dracula-inspired Nosferatu (1922) is being written by Stefan Eickhoff. Entitled Max Schreck – Gespenstertheater (Ghost theatre), it will be published later this year. Learn more.

Bardelys at Pordenone
The recently re-discovered King Vidor film, Bardelys the Magnificent (1926), will be unveiled at the Pordenone silent film festival in October. Other highlights announced include French comedies, the films of W.C. Fields, the films of W.K.L. Dickson, and ‘lost’ films of Sessue Hayakawa. Learn more.

Divas dolorosa
A new book has been published on the ever-suffering diva actresses of Italian silent film, such as Francesca Bertini and Lyda Borelli. Angela Dalle Vacche’s Diva: Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema is published by the University of Texas Press and is accompanied by the DVD Diva Dolorosa made by silent found footage auteur Peter Delpeut. Learn more.

Sentiments past
Lea Jacobs’ new book is The Decline of Sentiment: American Film in the 1920s, and “seeks to characterize the radical shifts in taste that transformed American film in the jazz age”, looking at Erich von Stroheim, Charlie Chaplin, Ernst Lubitsch, and Monta Bell, among many others. It’s published by the University of California Press. Learn more.

‘Til next time!

Bioscope Newsreel no. 1

May 6, 2008 By in Bioscope, Newsreel 6 Comments

British newsreel cameraman Jack Cotter, working for Pathé Gazette in 1922

I need to do a little more to separate news pieces from background, more discursive pieces, and so I’m going to introduce The Bioscope Newsreel. This will be a gathering of news alerts on silent cinema, with links to further information, released at what will no doubt be irregular intervals. Nevertheless, just like the newsreels (which were of course an invention of the silent cinema), each release will be numbered, there will be an average five stories per reel, and each story will have a mildly jokey title. So here goes with issue number 1…

Filming the father of Indian film
A feature film is to be made of the life of Dadasaheb Phalke, who made Raja Harishchandra, the first Indian fiction film, based on Hindu mythology, in 1913. Learn more.

Read all about it
The bi-monthly PDF magazine on silent cinema, The Silent Treatment, is now available online, with back issues for 2007. Learn more.

Hard times
Flicker Alley is to release a DVD of the important American social dramas Traffic in Souls (1913) and The Italian (1915) in July 2008, under the title ‘Hardships of the New Land’. Learn more.

More from the alley
Flicker Alley is busy at the moment, because also promised in September 2008 is its DVD release of Abel Gance’s pacifist classic J’Accuse (1919) and a Douglas Fairbanks boxed set in November 2008. Learn more.

Repatriation
A collection of American newsreels, documentaries, trailers and promotional films, dating 1912-1927, is being repatriated from the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia to American film archives. Learn more.

‘Til next time!