Essay

A MODERN MOTHER GOOSE (Issue #1 of Fleischer Fun Shop series, 1924) KOKO PACKS UP (Directed by Dave Fleischer; Out of the Inkwell Films, 1925) KOKO’S EARTH CONTROL (Directed by Dave Fleischer, Inkwell Studios, 1928) Max Fleischer was a New York cartoonist whose interest in mechanics led to … [Read more...] about Animation Rarities, 1917-1928

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

It’s not true, as some recent news articles have it, that Das alte Gesetz (The Ancient Law) was forgotten, nor was it lost. Highly praised by Lotte Eisner, the grande dame of Weimar cinema criticism, the film has received a fair amount of attention in academic circles ever since a 1984 restoration, … [Read more...] about The Ancient Law

For such a professionally modest filmmaker—“I just want to make a tray of good tofu,” is the oft-quoted self-assessment—Yasujiro Ozu generates a surprising amount of critical discord. Is he a neorealist or a formalist? Radical or conservative? The most or least Japanese of Japan’s filmmakers? … [Read more...] about An Inn in Tokyo

Presenters: Robert Byrne, Martin Koerber, Russell Merritt, Davide Pozzi, Cynthia Walk, and Elzbieta Wysocka RESTORATION REDUX E.A. Dupont’s 1923 feature The Ancient Law, about the son of a rabbi who leaves the shtetl to become an actor, was reconstructed by the Deutsche Kinemathek in 1984 based … [Read more...] about Amazing Tales from the Archives 2018

Presenters: Heather Linville from the Academy Film Archive, Eilf Rongen-Kaynakçi from EYE Filmmuseum, and George Willeman from the Library of Congress "THE WORLD'S MOST TRAVELED GIRL" In the late 1920s Aloha Wanderwell Baker became the first woman to travel around the world by car, deploying her … [Read more...] about Amazing Tales from the Archives 2017

Presenters: Bryony Dixon, Georges Mourier, Janice Simpson, and Emily Wensel Behind the Silver Screen Bryony Dixon, senior curator of silent film for the British Film Institute, returns to present rarely seen short nonfiction films and cine-magazine items about the British film industry in the … [Read more...] about Amazing Tales from the Archives 2016

Presenters: Bryony Dixon, Dan Streible, Ben Burtt and Craig Barron We continue our behind-the-curtain look at the international preservation scene with another edition of our popular Amazing Tales from the Archives program. A NEW LOOK AT AN OLD SNEEZE Fred Ott’s Sneeze was shot in Edison’s … [Read more...] about Amazing Tales from the Archives 2014