AMERICAN VENUS (1926)
Coming Attraction Preview
(Library of Congress)
Louise Brooks plays a supporting role in this comedy about the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, which also stars Fay Lanphier, Miss America 1925. Two-strip Technicolor was used in some sequences.
SHORE ACRES (1920)
Coming Attraction Preview
(UCLA Film and Television Archive)
Directed by Rex Ingram, this was a remake of a 1914 film about a shipwrecked family. Ingram is best known as the director of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which catapulted Rudolph Valentino to stardom.
THE THREE PASSIONS (1928)
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(UCLA Film and Television Archive)
This was Rex Ingram’s last American-made film. His artistic vision was not well suited to MGM, and after a quarrel with Louis B. Mayer, Ingram’s films displayed the truncated credit “Metro Goldwyn presents,” excluding all mention of Mayer.
THE YOUNG RAJAH (1922)
Coming Attraction Preview
(UCLA Film and Television Archive)
This lost Rudolph Valentino film was adapted by June Mathis from the 1895 novel Amos Judd. After completing The Young Rajah, which featured the Latin Lover in a bejeweled codpiece designed by his wife Natacha Rambova, Valentino took a two-year hiatus from movies.
VITAGRAPH SHORTS (1908–1909)
(UCLA Film and Television Archive)
A selection of extremely rare fragments from shorts produced by the Vitagraph Studio in New York, preserved on film from paper prints originally submitted to the Library of Congress to ensure copyright protection. The Library of Congress did not initially accept film as a suitable medium for filing to obtain copyright, so studios would transfer a few feet of each movie onto paper as proof of authenticity. In many instances, these paper prints are the only surviving record of thousands of lost films.
A NIGHT IN DREAMLAND (1907)
(UCLA Film and Television Archive)
A six-minute fragment of a Vitagraph short set in Santa Claus’s far-from-jolly workshop. Preserved from the sole surviving print.
STARRING IN WESTERN STUFF (1916)
(UCLA Film and Television Archive)
Most of the first reel of a two-reel comedy starring the King of the Cowboys, Tom Mix, who also directed. The highest-paid western star of the 1920s, Tom Mix was a genuine rodeo champion who got his start in movies as a cattle wrangler.
NOW I’LL TELL ONE (1927)
(British Film Institute)
One reel of a Hal Roach two-reeler starring Charley Chase (née Charles Parrot) and directed by Chase’s brother James Parrot. It also features Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, whom Chase first met separately by directing Hardy in Billy West films and acting with Laurel in Just Rambling Along (1918).
LOTUS BLOSSOM (1921)
(UCLA Film and Television Archive)
The only film released by James B. Leong Productions, formed to produce all-Chinese films in answer to racist representations of Chinese in Hollywood films. James Leong entered the movies as D.W. Griffith’s interpreter on Broken Blossoms. Originally entitled The Lotus Flower, the story is based on the legend of a girl who sacrifices her life to save her father’s reputation as an artisan.
ROOKIES (1927)
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(Library of Congress)
The first in a series of popular comedies pairing Karl Dane and George K. Arthur, who first appeared together in King Vidor’s The Big Parade (1925).
BARDELYS THE MAGNIFICENT (1926)
Coming Attraction Preview
(Library of Congress)
A tongue-in-cheek swashbuckler starring John Gilbert and directed by King Vidor. Also featured are Eleanor Boardman (Vidor’s second wife) and the team of Karl Dane and George K. Arthur.
THE DIVINE WOMAN (1928)
(Warner Bros. Classics)
Listed by the American Film Institute as one of the ten most wanted lost films, this is the only surviving reel of Greta Garbo’s only lost film. It was directed by the great Victor Sjöström, who also directed Lon Chaney in He Who Gets Slapped (1924) and Lillian Gish in The Wind (1928).
THE TIMBER QUEEN (1922)
One reel of a Ruth Roland serial, originally presented in 15 chapters. The only woman to be listed as one of the Top Ten Cowboy Stars, she performs her own stunts in this classic example of a thrill-a-minute western serial.
Presented at SFSFF 2002 with live music by Michael Mortilla