You can read the program essay for our 2019 screening of West of Zanzibar here “An outpouring of the Cesspools of Hollywood! ... How any normal person could have thought that this horrible syphilitic play could have made an entertaining picture, even with Lon Chaney, who appears in gruesome and … [Read more...] about West of Zanzibar
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
You can read the program essay for our 2011 screening of Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans here Sunrise sits at the rare intersection of great art and great commerce. Perhaps the film could only have been made through an unlikely alliance between two opposing personalities: Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, … [Read more...] about Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
Miss Lulu Bett
In February of 1920, Wisconsin author Zona Gale published her sixth novel Miss Lulu Bett to great acclaim and popularity. Critics praised the book’s naturalistic dialogue, its critique of small-town conformity, and its relevance. At a time when the women’s suffrage amendment was marching toward its … [Read more...] about Miss Lulu Bett
Man With A Movie Camera
The spinning of a child’s toy top or the whir of a film strip running through the wheel of an editing table—differing legends explain the inspiration for David Kaufman to adopt the alias that history immortalized: Dziga Vertov. In the new Soviet state, the onomatopoetic nom de plume of the … [Read more...] about Man With A Movie Camera
Jujiro
If one wanted to explore Japanese cinema history by studying the careers of its central figures, one could start with actor-turned-director Teinosuke Kinugasa. His biography is intertwined with each phase of his country’s cinema, from its roots in Japanese theatre traditions to the boundary-pushing … [Read more...] about Jujiro
I Was Born, But…
“I started to make a film about children and ended up with a film about grownups; while I had originally planned to make a fairly bright little story, it changed while I was working on it …. The company hadn’t thought it would turn out this way. They were so unsure of it that they delayed its … [Read more...] about I Was Born, But…
The Gaucho
In 1926 Douglas Fairbanks was beginning to sense his own mortality. His elder half-brother John had suffered a paralytic stroke and would be dead within the year. His storybook union to Mary Pickford was strained, her excessive drinking an affront to her husband’s lifelong abstinence. Yet “Doug”, as … [Read more...] about The Gaucho