Two decades after Marlene Dietrich’s death, her legend still retains its allure. One persistent myth is that Josef von Sternberg created Dietrich the Seductress in Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel, 1930), when in fact Dietrich herself had been carefully crafting her public persona long before von … [Read more...] about The Woman Men Yearn For
Wild and Weird, 1906-1928
Camera-wielding insects, taunting red devils, monstrously large pets — since its inception, cinema has been aligned with the fantastic. Early pioneers of special effects developed cinematic “tricks”— cross-dissolves, stop-motion animation, matte shots, even the close-up — that became the building … [Read more...] about Wild and Weird, 1906-1928
Walt Disney’s Laugh-O-grams, 1921-1923
Before Mickey Mouse, before the Fairbanksian moustache, and even before the Alice comedies, came Walt Disney’s Laugh-O-grams. Disney’s first animated films began in 1920 as after-work projects when Disney was a commercial artist for an advertising company in Kansas City. He made these cartoons by … [Read more...] about Walt Disney’s Laugh-O-grams, 1921-1923
Variations on a Theme: Matti Bye, Soundscape Artist
I had two big passions when I was a boy in Stockholm—music and film. Every day I practiced classical piano and, in the evenings, I went to screenings at the city’s cinematheque. One day in 1989, a member of the staff asked me if I could accompany a silent film at an upcoming screening of … [Read more...] about Variations on a Theme: Matti Bye, Soundscape Artist
Upstream
Most filmgoers think of John Ford primarily as a director of westerns, with 1939’s Stagecoach as his first important film. However, of Ford’s more than 140 titles, only about a third are westerns and nearly half are silents of which only 15 percent survive. The discovery in 2009 of a complete print … [Read more...] about Upstream
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
You can read the program essay for our 2009 screening of Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans here Historian William K. Everson dubbed 1927 “the absolute zenith of the art of the silent film.” Metropolis, from Germany, and Napoleon, from France, are noteworthy enough to mark the year as significant. But … [Read more...] about Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
Silent Film, Orphan Film: Saving, Studying, and Screening Neglected Cinema
A fragment of Wallace Reid’s otherwise lost western The Tribal Outlaw (Bison 101, 1912). The charming eight-minute narrative that tries to explain the inspiration for Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata (1909). William and Irene Finley’s playful wildlife film, Chumming with Chipmunks (1921). These are some … [Read more...] about Silent Film, Orphan Film: Saving, Studying, and Screening Neglected Cinema
Silent Divas of the Italian Cinema
This feature was published in conjunction with the screening of Il Fuoco at SFSFF 2011 When on a shopping spree for anguish, rapture, martyrdom, comas, counts, rapes, bastards, orphans, dogaressas, philtres, sirens, suicides, mistaken identities, flower festivals, and sudden fatal loves—even a … [Read more...] about Silent Divas of the Italian Cinema