Feature

4 JANUARY Hundreds of thousands of Berliners take to the streets in support of police chief Emil Eichhorn fired for refusing to use force to quash demonstrations in the wake of World War I. Rightwing mercenaries known as the Freikorps respond and the fray results in hundreds of deaths. On January … [Read more...] about 1919: A Decade Ends and an Age Begins

Golden Ages Come and Go Among the casualties of the First World War were many of the national cinemas of Europe, taking Italy’s silent divas and nearly everything French down with them. Denmark, neutral for the duration, lost its markets to war and, by 1917, its once flourishing Nordisk … [Read more...] about 1917: The Year That Changed the Movies

ESSANAY SNAGS CHAPLIN Charles Chaplin had started his career the previous year at Mack Sennett’s Keystone studio but moved to the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company in January with a significant pay hike from $125 a week to $1,250. He made fourteen films with Essanay, many of which were filmed … [Read more...] about 1915: The Year in Motion Pictures

This feature was published in conjunction with the screening of Fragment of an Empire at SFSFF 2018 While silent cinema has its share of silk-hatted swells, champagne, and cotillions, the working class at the bottom of the income pyramid is by no means neglected. Miner strikes, child labor, … [Read more...] about Workers of Silent Cinema Unite!

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

In Memoriam: Film Preservationist David Shepard (1940–2017) In January 2017, we lost one of our own, David Shepard, beloved champion of silent and classic film. Shepard began at the wee age of twelve renting Kodascope prints to run at home in his newly acquired Bell and Howell projector. When … [Read more...] about A Tribute to David Shepard

This feature was published in conjunction with the screening of No Man's Gold at SFSFF 2018 Not for nothing these popular, if often cheaply made, westerns were nicknamed Horse Operas, requiring of actors one paramount skill, ridership, or at least the ability to sit convincingly in the … [Read more...] about Tony the Wonder Horse

This feature was published in conjunction with the screening of The Cameraman at SFSFF 2019 The hard-working piano player is an iconic image of silent cinema and with good reason: a 1922 poll of theater owners showed that solo piano was far and away the most popular form of musical accompaniment. … [Read more...] about Strike Up the Orchestra