1999

You can read the program essay for our 2012 screening of Wings here Wings is best known today as the winner of the first Academy Award for Best Picture—the only silent film so honored. However, there were actually two Best Picture awards presented in 1927: a “Best Production” award for “the most … [Read more...] about Wings

Lev Vladimirovich Kuleshov was born in Tambov, Russia, in 1899 and came of age in a turbulent world. Civil war gripped the country. Cinema, like the dream of socialism, was in its infancy. As a set designer under the Tsarist filmmaker Yevgeni Bauer, the young Kuleshov was already writing about the … [Read more...] about Po Zakonu

Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1877) was re-titled Love when it reached the screen in November of 1927, but it’s possible that any story starring John Gilbert and Greta Garbo would have been given this title by studio executives. What better way to capitalize on the movie magazines, which were … [Read more...] about Love

Animated cartoons were a regular attraction at movie theaters in the silent era, yet they were appreciated for the most part as disposable novelty items of little artistic value. The vast majority of animated films produced in the first 30 years of the 20th century have been lost because of … [Read more...] about Animation Rarities