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1 June

Piccadilly (Dir E A Dupont, UK, 1929) (Screening format – not known, 92 mins) A film noir before the term was in use, uncredited German director E.A. Dupont’s Piccadilly is one of the true greats of British silent films, on a par with the best of Anthony Asquith or Alfred Hitchcock during this period. Valentine Wilmot (Jameson Thomas) owns a nightclub featuring dancers Mabel (Gilda Gray) and Vic (Cyril Ritchard). After a confrontation with Wilmot, Vic quits performing at the club. When the joint starts losing business, a desperate Wilmot hires former dishwasher Shosho (Anna May Wong) as a dancer. She is an instant hit and forms a rapport with Wilmot, which makes both Mabel and Shosho’s friend (King Ho Chang) jealous, leading to a mysterious murder.  A stylish evocation of Jazz Age London, with dazzlingly fluid cinematography and scenes ranging from the opulent West End to the seediness of Limehouse. One of the pinnacles of British silent cinema, Piccadilly is a sumptuous show business melodrama seething with sexual and racial tension – with an original screenplay by Arnold Bennett.  Find out more atscreenonline.org.uk.  With live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne.  Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, BirminghamLink

The Cruise of the Jasper B (Dir. James W. Horne, USA, 1926) (Screening format – not known, 60mins)  Jerry Cleggert (Rod La Rocque) is a good-natured descendant of an 18th-century pirate who resides aboard the rickety ship Jasper B.   Informed that in order to receive a large inheritance, he must marry on his twenty-fifth birthday Jerry soon meets his ideal would-be bride Agatha Fairhaven (Mildred Harris) but complications arise when the dastardly Reginald Maltravers (Snitz Edwards) attempts to cheat them out of their inheritance and a race to the alter is on.  Find out more at moviessilently.com.  Presented as part of the Kennington Bioscope’s fifth annual Silent Film Weekend.  With live musical accompaniment.  Cinema Museum, Lambeth, London  Link

Der Steinerne Reiter (The Stone Rider) (Dir. Fritz Wendhausen, Germany 1923) (Screening format – not known, 86mins) In a distant Teutonic village an elderly man tells the villagers that the valley where they now happily live was once ruled by a cruel despot (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) who demanded the right of the first night with the bride of one of his vassals.  When the bridegroom refuses there is a fight and the bride is accidentally killed. The bride’s sister (Lucie Mannheim) swears revenge on the despot but gradually begins to see him in a new light.  However, the other villagers remain intent upon killing him and a tense chase ensues in this gripping but little known fantasy-horror film based upon an idea suggested by Metropolis script writer Thea van Harbou.  Find out more atwikipedia.org.  Presented as part of the Kennington Bioscope’s fifth annual Silent Film Weekend.  With live musical accompaniment.  Cinema Museum, Lambeth, London Link

The Price of Pleasure (Dir. Edward Sloman, USA, 1925) (Screening format – not known, 70mins) Linnie Randall, a shopgirl (Virginia Valli), is bored with her humdrum life. Her complaints are overheard by the wealthy Garry Schuyler (Norman Kerry), who is disguised as a mechanic. He asks her out to dinner and, to her delight, he calls in a limousine. The two of them wind up spending a whirlwind week together and marry at the end of it. Their happiness is ruined, however, when Schuyler’s aristocratic mother (Kate Lester) loudly voices her disapproval of her new daughter-in-law. She makes life so miserable for Linnie that she runs away…but that’s just the start of her problems.  Find out more atcatalog.afi.com    Presented as part of the Kennington Bioscope’s fifth annual Silent Film Weekend.  With live musical accompaniment.  Cinema Museum, Lambeth, London Link

35mm Shorts from the David Eve Collection – Programme One  (Screening format – 35mm)  David Eve has kindly allowed the Kennington Bioscope access to his collection of rare short films, all of which derive from unique surviving copies now preserved on 35mm at George Eastman House. This programme will include fiction and nonfiction items from the USA, Great Britain and France, among them comedies and dramas from pioneering companies Selig, Clarendon and Kalem plus a hitherto missing two-reeler from the Mack Sennett studio. Presented as part of the Kennington Bioscope’s fifth annual Silent Film Weekend.  With live musical accompaniment.  Cinema Museum, Lambeth, London Link.

Beauty’s Worth (Dir. Robert G. Vignola, USA, 1922) (Screening format – not known, 112 mins)   Prudence Cole (Marion Davies), a Quaker brought up by two conservative aunts, Elizabeth (Martha Mattox) and Cynthia Whitney (Aileen Manning), is happy in her demure un-sophistication until Henry Garrison (Hallam Cooley) and his mother (Truly Shattuck), formerly neighbors and friends of her family, visit the Whitneys. Henry, snobbish and flirtatious, trifles with her affections and secretly despises her manner of dress. Mrs. Garrison invites Prudence for a visit to a fashionable seaside resort, and Henry, ashamed of her appearance, neglects her for Amy Tillson (June Elvidge). But when bohemian artist  Cheyne Rovein (Forrest Stanley)  selects Prudence for the leading role in elaborate charades which he stages, opinions begin to change in this romantic comedy-drama.  Find out more at imdb.com.  Presented as part of the Kennington Bioscope’s fifth annual Silent Film Weekend.  With live musical accompaniment.  Cinema Museum, Lambeth, London Link.

Laila (Dir. George Schnéevoigt, Nor, 1929) (Screening format – not known, 146mins) Without doubt one of the highlights of this year’s Hippodrome Festival of Silent Film (HippFest), this epic-scaled romantic drama tells the story of Laila, separated as a baby from her Norwegian parents and raised amongst the nomadic Sami people. Returned to her birth family Laila grows to maturity, torn between the Christian settlers and the reindeer-herding community who raised her as one of their own.  Director Schnéevoigt (cinematographer on a number of Carl Dreyer films), captures the imposing vastness of the stunning snow and ice landscape, the fascinating way of life of a still beleaguered minority people, and the intimate narrative of a father who sacrifices his own happiness for that of his daughter. Find out more at parallax-view.org.   Presented as part of the Kennington Bioscope’s fifth annual Silent Film Weekend.  With live musical accompaniment.  Cinema Museum, Lambeth, London Link.

Angora Love (Dir. Lewis R Foster, US, 1929) +You’re Darn Tootin’ (Dir. E L Kennedy, US, 1928)  (Screening format – not known, 21/20 mins)   In Angora Love, Laurel and Hardy are adopted by a runaway goat, whose noise and aroma in turn get the goat of their suspicious landlord. Attempts to bathe the smelly animal result in a waterlogged free-for-all.  Find out more atlaurelandhardycentral.com. In You’re Darn Tootin’, Members of a municipal band, Stan and Ollie seem to be always following someone else’s lead, rather than that of the temperamental conductor. Soon they’re out of a job, as well as their lodgings when the landlady finds out they’ve been fired. The boys try their luck at being street musicians, but the tiffs they get into with each other soon spread to passersby in general, until the street is filled with men pulling each other’s pants off.  Find out more at wikipedia.org.  Presented as part of the Herne Hill Free Film Festival.  With live piano accompaniment from Neil Brand.  Station Square, Herne Hill Link

2 June

Souls For Sale (Dir. Rupert Hughes, USA, 1923) (Screening format – not known, 90mins) The wonderfully named Remember ‘Mem’ Steddon (Eleanor Boardman) is a wide-eyed girl from a rural town who literally leaps off the train on her honeymoon to escape her new husband (Lew Cody). He swept her off her feet in a whirlwind courtship but now he fills her with loathing; and no wonder, because he’s a sneaky operator with a skinny mustache and a history of marrying women and killing them for their insurance money.  But what is a girl to do? Stranded in the desert Remember staggers under the burning sun and is close to death when she’s rescued by a sheik on horseback. Is he a mirage? Not at all. He’s an actor making a film. Poking fun at Valentino, a title card notes: “The usual sheik led the usual captive across the usual desert.” The girl is nursed back to life by the filmmakers and taken to Los Angeles. But that’s when her troubles start in this comedy-drama with guest appearances by numerous Hollywood notables including Charlie Chaplin and Erich von Stroheim.  Find out more at moviessilently.com   Presented as part of the Kennington Bioscope’s fifth annual Silent Film Weekend.  With live musical accompaniment.  Cinema Museum, Lambeth, London Link

The Old Swimmin’ Hole (Dir. Joe De Grasse, USA, 1921) (Screening format – not known, 60mins) Based on the poem by James Whitcomb Riley, this is one of the few silent features to tell its story in entirely visual terms, without the aid of intertitles. Ezra (Charles Ray) is the prototypical rural youth — he’s frequently late for school and would just as soon skip it altogether in favor of fishing at the “old swimmin’ hole” with his pals. Ezra and a fat boy named Skinny (Lincoln Stedman) are rivals for Myrtle (Laura LaPlante, in one of her first notable roles). Myrtle favors Skinny, which results in various battles between the two boys. But will Ezra’s chances with Myrtle improve at the annual farmers’ picnic? Find out more atimdb.comPresented as part of the Kennington Bioscope’s fifth annual Silent Film Weekend.  With live musical accompaniment.  Cinema Museum, Lambeth, LondonLink

Common Ground (Dir. William C. de Mille, USA, 1916) (Screening format – not known, 50mins)  This was the sixth of Thomas Meighan’s eight starring films of 1916. Top billing, however, was bestowed upon Marie Doro here cast as a feisty little factory girl known as the Kid. When he tries to expose corrupt politician Mordant (Theodore Roberts) young Judge Evans (Meighan) is framed on a trumped-up criminal charge. His career in ruins, Evans finds himselfpersona non gratain the better social circles, thanks in great part to the machinations of his ex-fiancée, Doris (Mary Mersch)  who happens to be Mordant’s daughter. Looks like it will fall to The Kid to save the day.  Find out more at wikipedia.org Presented as part of the Kennington Bioscope’s fifth annual Silent Film Weekend.  With live musical accompaniment.  Cinema Museum, Lambeth, LondonLink

35mm Shorts from the David Eve Collection – A second programme of unique surviving copies of rare shorts by kind permission of collector David Eve. This selection will include examples of Pathé stencil colour alongside comedies and dramas from Edison, Vitagraph, Selig, Clarendon and Hepworth. Presented as part of the Kennington Bioscope’s fifth annual Silent Film Weekend.  With live musical accompaniment.  Cinema Museum, Lambeth, London Link

On to Reno (Dir. James Cruze, USA, 1928) (Screening format – not known, c60mins) When Vera and Bud (Marie Prevost and Cullen Landis), a young married couple, become financially hardpressed, Vera accepts an offer from Mrs. Holmes, a rich matron who wishes Vera to impersonate her in Reno to fulfill the residence requirements for her divorce. When Bud finds she has gone to Reno, he immediately suspects that she plans to divorce him. Mr. Holmes goes to Reno, hoping to effect a last-minute reconciliation with his wife and when Bud and Mrs Holmes arrive the comedic chaos is complete.  Find out more atwikipedia.org Presented as part of the Kennington Bioscope’s fifth annual Silent Film Weekend.  With live musical accompaniment.  Cinema Museum, Lambeth, London Link

Monsieur Beaucaire (Dir. Sidney Olcott, USA, 1924) (Screening format – not known, 106mins) The Duke of Chartres (Rudolf Valentino)  is in love with Princess Henriette (Bebe Daniels), but she seemingly wants nothing to do with him. Eventually he grows tired of her insults and flees to England when the King insists that the two marry. He goes undercover as Monsieur Beaucaire, the barber of the French Ambassador, and finds that he enjoys the freedom of a commoner’s life. After catching the Duke of Winterset cheating at cards, he forces him to introduce him as a nobleman to Lady Mary, with whom he has become infatuated. But will his infatuation last or will Princess Henriette come round to returning his affections.  Find out more atimdb.com Presented as part of the Kennington Bioscope’s fifth annual Silent Film Weekend.  With live musical accompaniment.  Cinema Museum, Lambeth, LondonLink

3 June

The Ancient Law (aka Das Alte Gesetz) (Dir. E A Dupont, Ger, 1923) (Screening format – DCP, 135 mins)In the mid 1800s in Galicia, Baruch Mayer (Ernst Deutsch), yearns to become an actor. Despite the expectation to follow in his father’s footsteps and become an orthodox rabbi, he breaks from tradition and leaves the shtetl in pursuit of his dream. Whilst performing in a traveling theatre troupe he meets the Austrian archduchess, Elisabeth Theresia (Henny Porten), who falls in love with the young man. With her support he joins the renowned Vienna’s Burg Theatre company where he soon rises to fame.  “With its complex portrayal of orthodoxy and emancipation, E. A. Dupont’s period film marks a highpoint of Jewish filmmaking in Germany. This new restoration marks the first time that a version corresponding to the lost 1920s German theatrical release will be shown, both in its original length, and with the colourisation digitally restored.” – Berlinale 68.Find out more at silentfilm.org Presented as part of the BFI’s Weimar Cinema Season.  With recorded Philippe Schoeller score.  BFI Southbank, London Link

4 June

The Cat’s Bridge (aka Betrayal aka Der Katzensteg) (Dir. Gerhard Lamprecht, Ger, 1927) (Screening format – 16mm, 124mins)  This superbly realised action film, set during the Napoleonic Wars, centres on a family divided by politics. While the son, a staunch Prussian, is horrified by his father’s treacherous support for the French, he equally condemns the local patriots’ mindless spirit of revenge. The ‘Prussian film’ was a conservative genre, but Lamprecht’s take is intriguingly nuanced.  Based on the book by Hermann Sudermann, it portrays a post-war society roiled by internal strife. With his historical melodrama, Gerhard Lamprecht was advocating for thoughtfulness in place of a nationalist upsurge, and for additional fealty besides loyalty to country.  Find out more at berlinale.de.  Presented as part of the BFI’s Weimar Cinema Season.  With live piano accompaniment.  BFI Southbank, LondonLink

6 June

Phantom Of The Opera (Dir. Rupert Julian, 1925)  (Screening format – not known, 103mins) A title that needs no introduction, The Phantom of the Opera has spawned many remakes, remasters and sequels. This original film version, produced with moments of early Technicolour, sees Lon Chaney, the ‘Man of a Thousand Faces’ perform one of his most iconic roles. His ghastly make-up and outrageous performance made this title a benchmark in the American silent film era. The film was a critical and commercial success upon release, and still stands as an important film in cinematic history to this day, with press quotes from the time labeling the film an ‘ultra-fantastic melodrama’ (New York Times), ‘produced on a stupendous scale’ (Moving Picture World) and ‘probably the greatest inducement to nightmare that has yet been screened’ (Variety).  The mysterious phantom (Lon Chaney) is a vengeful composer living in the catacombs under the Paris Opera House, determined to promote the career of  the singer he loves (Mary Philbin).  Famed for the phantom’s shock unmasking, incredible set designs and the masked ball sequence, it still packs a punch. Find out more at wikipedia.org.  With live musical accompaniment from musicians of the Yorkshire Silent Film Festival. Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate  Link

7 June

The General (Dir. Buster Keaton/Clyde Bruckman, 1926)  (Screening format – not known, 75mins)  Widely considered one of the greatest films ever made and one of the most revered comedies of the silent era, Buster Keaton’s effortless masterpiece sees hapless Southern railroad engineer Johnny Gray (Keaton) facing off against Union soldiers during the American Civil War. When Johnny’s fiancée, Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack), is accidentally taken away while on a train stolen by Northern forces, Gray pursues the soldiers, using various modes of transportation in comic action scenes that highlight Keaton’s boundless, innovative wit and joyful, lighthearted dexterity, to reclaim the train and thereby save the South. Find out more at busterkeaton.com.  With live musical accompaniment from Jonny Best (piano) and Trevor Bartlett (percussion).  Truck Theatre, Hull Li

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Different from the Others (aka Anders als die Andern) (Dir. Richard Oswald, Ger, 1919) (Screening format – DCP, 50mins)  Released in 1919, and banned in 1920, Different From The Others explores a doomed relationship between a master violinist (Conrad Veidt) and his male student (Fritz Schulz) as their relationship is uncovered and they become a target for blackmailers.   One of the first gay-themed films in the history of cinema, this powerful plea for the decriminalisation of homosexuality, co-written by pioneering sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, sparked riots and censorship. With a fearless performance from Veidt, it packs an emotional and intellectual punch – revealing both Weimar Berlin’s flourishing gay subculture and the devastating consequences of mainstream intolerance.  Banned by Weimar and burned by the Nazis, only an incomplete version of  the original film survives.  Find out more atnytimes.com .  Presented as part of the BFI’s Weimar Cinema Season.  With live piano accompaniment.  BFI Southbank, London Link

9 June

Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde (Dir. John S. Robertson ,US, 1920) (Screening format – not known,   mins) Not the first cinematic version of Stevenson’s famous story but one of the most memorable with John Barrymore’s classic transformation scenes, a mixture of facial and bodily contortions as well as makeup. He tends to be hammy as the leering beast of a thug but brings a tortured struggle to the repressed doctor, horrified at the demon he’s unleashed, guilty that he enjoys Hyde’s unrestrained life of drinking and whoring and terrified that he can no longer control the transformations. Martha Mansfield co-stars as his pure and innocent sweetheart, and Nita Naldi (the vamp of Blood and Sand) has a small but memorable role as the world-weary dance-hall darling who first “wakens” Jekyll’s “baser nature”. The film uses elements from a 1887 stage version of Stevenson’s original novella by Thomas Russell Sullivan. A huge box office success on its release.  Find out more at moviessilently.com   With live piano accompaniment by Tony Berchmans.  Cinema Museum, Lambeth, London Link

Early Japanese Animation  (Dir. Various, jap, 1917-32) (Screening format – not known, 80mins) Very few of the earliest animated films from Japan survive – after being screened alongside live action features, films were often sold on from cinemas to smaller mobile venues where they would be broken down and sold as single frames. The films that have been preserved in archives offer a fascinating glimpse into the beginnings of a rich history of Japanese animation which continues to this day. This compilation of these very early anime films includes The Dull Sword (1917, Jun’ichi Kouchi), Urashima Taro (1918), A Ship of Oranges (1927, Noburō Ōfuji), Yasuji Murata’s Monkey and the Crabs (1927, Yasuji Murata), The Animal Olympics (1928, Yasuji Murata) and Taro’s Train (1929, Yasuji Murata). With live musical accompaniment by composers and musicians of the Guildhall’s Electronic Music Studio.  Barbican, London Link

10 June

Anniversary of the Revolution(aka Godovshchina Revoliutsii) (Dir. Dziga Vertov, USSR, 1918) (Screening format – not known, 120mins) One of the most important filmmakers of the twentieth century, Dziga Vertov is best known for his seminal documentary Man with the Movie Camera (1929) and for the radical manifestos published during the 1920s in which he outlined his theoretical principles and voiced in trenchant and provocative terms his conviction that newsreels and documentaries should be the foundation of all Soviet cinema.  Anniversary of the Revolution  was Vertov’s first historical newsreel. He would later describe the film as his ‘industrial exam’. It is a compilation documentary, consisting of newsreel footage that Vertov assembled and edited while working at the Moscow Film Committee in 1918. A commissioned work, it was screened in several cities simultaneously as part of the official celebrations of the first anniversary of the October Revolution in November 1918.  For many decades Vertov’s film was regarded as irretrievably lost.  Then, in 2017, the film scholar Svetlana Ishevskaia discovered the full text of the film’s intertitles. Thanks to her discovery and to the painstaking efforts of Dr Nikolai Izvolov, a film historian and researcher employed at the Museum of Cinema in Moscow, who has spent many months reconstituting Vertov’s documentary, we now have a version of the film that matches the Vertov’s original intent with a reasonable degree of fidelity.  Find out more at anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com.  Followed by panel discussion.  UCL Darwin Lecture Theatre,  London WC1Link

Easy Street  (Dir, Charles Chaplin, US, 1917) +  TheImmigrant (Dir, Charles Chaplin, US, 1917)  + The Adventurer (Dir. Charles Chaplin, US, 1917) (Screening format – not known, 19/17/18  mins)  . For Easy Street, his ninth film for Mutual and the most famous of the twelve he was contracted to make, Chaplin ordered the first of the T-shaped street sets to be built that he would consistently utilize to provide a perfect backdrop to his comedy. The look and feel of Easy Street evoke the South London of his childhood. Poverty, starvation, drug addiction, and urban violence—subjects that foreshadow the social concerns in his later films—are interwoven in “an exquisite short comedy” wrote critic Walter Kerr, “humor encapsulated in the regular rhythms of light verse.” . In the film, Charlie is a down-and-out derelict, sleeping at the steps of the religious mission .  He is entranced by the beautiful mission worker and organist, Edna Purviance.  Passing a police recruiting notice he decides to join but his ‘beat’ is Easy Street, terrorised by giant bully Eric Campbell!   Upon its release, Easy Street was hailed as a watershed moment in Chaplin’s career.  Find out more at silentsaregolden.com.  In The Immigrant newly arrived immigrant Chaplin struggles to pay for a meal with his new found lady friend.  In TheAdventurer Chaplin plays an escaped convict on the run from prison guards who falls into favor with a wealthy family after he saves a young lady from drowning.Presented as part of the Aldeburgh Festival.  With live piano accompaniment by Neil Brand.  Aldeburgh Cinema, Aldeburgh Link

Mother Krause’s Journey to Happiness (aka Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück ) (Dir. Phil Jutzi, Ger, 1929) (Screening format – DCP, 133mins)  Living precariously in a crowded Berlin tenement, old Mother Krause works hard to support her unemployed son and her daughter who has a communist boyfriend. This outstanding example of left-wing Weimar realism was inspired by Soviet cinema and the proletarian art of Heinrich Zille and Käthe Kollwitz. The performances feel fresh and modern, while Jutzi’s camera – out on location – captures rarely seen aspects of working-class life. Find out more atsilentfilm.org.  Presented as part of the BFI’s Weimar Cinema Season.  With recorded Joachim Bärenz score.  BFI Southbank, London Link

11 June

Blu-ray Launch Event: Early Women Filmmakers Collection  An evening to celebrate the work of women filmmaker pioneers, including Alice Guy-Blaché, Lois Weber, Germaine Dulac and many more. This special event will include screenings of selected short films and extracts illustrating the innovative and boundary-pushing nature of their work, plus a discussion with guest speakers who will explore their individual approaches to filmmaking and their contributions to the history of cinema.  BFI Southbank, London Link

13 June

The Silent Pianist Speaks  Silent film accompanist Neil Brand presents his one man show which brings to life the stars of the silent screen.  Presented as part of the Ulverston International Music Festival.  Coronation Hall, Ulverston Link

Diary Of A Lost Girl(Dir. G W Pabst, Ger, 1929) (Screening format – DCP, 106mins) A masterpiece of the German silent era, Diary of a Lost Girl was the second and final collaboration of actress Louise Brooks and director G.W. Pabst a mere months after their first collaboration in the now-legendary Pandora’s Box (1929). Brooks plays Thymian Henning, a beautiful young woman raped by an unscrupulous character employed at her father’s pharmacy (played with gusto by Fritz Rasp, the degenerate villain of such Fritz Lang classics as Metropolis, Spione, and Frau im Mond). After Thymian gives birth to his child and rejects her family’s expectations of marriage, the baby is torn from her care, and Thymian enters a purgatorial reform school that seems less an institute of learning than a conduit for fulfilling the headmistress’s sadistic sexual fantasies. Find out more at rogerebert.com.   Presented as part of the BFI’s Weimar Cinema Season.  With recorded Javier Pérez de Azpeitia score.  BFI Southbank, London  Link

The Cat’s Bridge (aka Betrayal aka Der Katzensteg) (Dir. Gerhard Lamprecht, Ger, 1927) (Screening format – 16mm, 124mins)  This superbly realised action film,

set during the Napoleonic Wars, centres on a family divided by politics. While the son, a staunch Prussian, is horrified by his father’s treacherous support for the French, he equally condemns the local patriots’ mindless spirit of revenge. The ‘Prussian film’ was a conservative genre, but Lamprecht’s take is intriguingly nuanced.  Based on the book by Hermann Sudermann, it portrays a post-war society roiled by internal strife. With his historical melodrama, Gerhard Lamprecht was advocating for thoughtfulness in place of a nationalist upsurge, and for additional fealty besides loyalty to country.  Find out more at berlinale.de.  Presented as part of the BFI’s Weimar Cinema Season.  With live piano accompaniment.  BFI Southbank, LondonLink

14 June

Neil Brand Presents Laurel and Hardy  Neil Brand presents an all-new show about the immortal comedy duo. From their earliest days on opposite sides of the Atlantic in Music Hall and on the stage, to their individual comedy films before they were paired up by Hal Roach, and on to their silent masterpieces before the arrival of sound, Neil will tell the touching story of the world’s greatest comedy team, who could not have been two more different men! Fully illustrated with stills, clips (both silent and sound) and Neil’s superlative piano accompaniment and culminating in two of the Boys’ best silent short films, this is a show that promises gales of laughter throughout, as well as getting under the skin of two warm, funny men who continue to make the world laugh when it needs it most.Contemporary Arts, Dundee   Link

15 June

Neil Brand Presents Laurel and Hardy  Neil Brand presents an all-new show about the immortal comedy duo. From their earliest days on opposite sides of the Atlantic in Music Hall and on the stage, to their individual comedy films before they were paired up by Hal Roach, and on to their silent masterpieces before the arrival of sound, Neil will tell the touching story of the world’s greatest comedy team, who could not have been two more different men! Fully illustrated with stills, clips (both silent and sound) and Neil’s superlative piano accompaniment and culminating in two of the Boys’ best silent short films, this is a show that promises gales of laughter throughout, as well as getting under the skin of two warm, funny men who continue to make the world laugh when it needs it most.  Hippodrome Cinema, Bo’Ness   Link

Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde (Dir.  Scott Pembroke/Joe Rock, US, 1925) (Screening format – not known, 21mins)  Dr. Pyckle (Stan Laurel), a respected British scientist, searches for the correct combination of chemicals for a powerful potion. Once he finds it, he tries it on himself. But instead of the wonderful effect the doctor had hoped for, the potion turns him into the diabolical Mr. Pryde, a fiend who outwits police at every turn while scouring London for fresh victims — of practical jokes. A humorous pastiche on the famous Stevenson story.  Find out more atmoviessilently.com  Presented as part of the quarterly meeting of the Laurel and Hardy Society.  Cinema Museum, Lambeth, LondonLink

People on Sunday (Dir. Robert Siodmak/Edgar G Ulmer, Ger, 1929) (Screening format – DCP, 74mins) Famously, Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann worked with Siodmak on this landmark of realist filmmaking, in which non-professionals act out an ‘everyday’, uneventful story of several young Berliners using their Sunday to spend a flirtatious day together at a lake on the edge of the city. With its massive cast of unpaid extras enjoying the summer sun, this classic silent film feels remarkably modern. Find out more at archive.org.  Presented as part of the BFI’s Weimar Cinema Season.  With recorded Donald Sosin score.  BFI Southbank, London Link

Diary Of A Lost Girl(Dir. G W Pabst, Ger, 1929) (Screening format – DCP, 106mins) A masterpiece of the German silent era, Diary of a Lost Girl was the second and final collaboration of actress Louise Brooks and director G.W. Pabst a mere months after their first collaboration in the now-legendary Pandora’s Box (1929). Brooks plays Thymian Henning, a beautiful young woman raped by an unscrupulous character employed at her father’s pharmacy (played with gusto by Fritz Rasp, the degenerate villain of such Fritz Lang classics as Metropolis, Spione, and Frau im Mond). After Thymian gives birth to his child and rejects her family’s expectations of marriage, the baby is torn from her care, and Thymian enters a purgatorial reform school that seems less an institute of learning than a conduit for fulfilling the headmistress’s sadistic sexual fantasies. Find out more atrogerebert.com.   Presented as part of the BFI’s Weimar Cinema Season.  With live iano accompaniment.  BFI Southbank, London  Link

16 June

Hell’s Hinges (Dir. Charles Swickard, US, 1916) (Screening format – not known, 64mins) The Reverend Robert Henley is sent out to the Wild West town of Placer Center, better known as “Hell’s Hinges”, with his sister Faith (Clara Williams) accompanying him. Rev. Henley was strong-armed into becoming a man of the cloth by his mother and has little interest in his job, but Faith is a true believer. Hell’s Hinges  is an out-of-control center of crime and violence ruled by Silk Miller (Alfred Hollingsworth), who owns the dance hall and has no interest whatsoever in any moral reform in his seedy town. Gunfighter Blaze Tracy (William S Hart) has been called into town by Miller to help throw the do-gooders out. Tracy sums up his philosophy as “shoot first and do your disputin’ afterward”, but one look at pretty Faith and he falls in love. One talk from Faith and Tracy finds religion, too.  Unfortunately, Rev. Henley goes in exactly the opposite direction….. Hell’s Hinges has a cynical take on the Wild West that was well ahead of its time in 1916 and was one of Hart’s most popular films.  Find out more at filmpreservation.org.  With live musical accompaniment by The Dodge Brothers.  The Electric Palace, Bridport, DorsetLink

The Street (aka Die Strasse) (Dir. Karl Grune, Ger, 1923) (Screening format – 35mm, 90mins)  This was the first of the famous Weimar ‘street films’ with their ambivalent take on the modern metropolis. A middle-aged man, bored with domesticity, takes a sudden plunge into the nocturnal wilderness of chaotic crowds, dazzling shopfronts and sexual temptations. This urban jungle was co-designed by Expressionist painter Ludwig Meidner: its enticements are a mirage – its dangers all too real…Find out more atacinemahistory.com.  Presented as part of the BFI’s Weimar Cinema Season.  With live piano accompaniment.  BFI Southbank, London  Link

Mother Krause’s Journey to Happiness (aka Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück ) (Dir. Phil Jutzi, Ger, 1929) (Screening format – DCP, 133mins)  Living precariously in a crowded Berlin tenement, old Mother Krause works hard to support her unemployed son and her daughter who has a communist boyfriend. This outstanding example of left-wing Weimar realism was inspired by Soviet cinema and the proletarian art of Heinrich Zille and Käthe Kollwitz. The performances feel fresh and modern, while Jutzi’s camera – out on location – captures rarely seen aspects of working-class life. Find out more at silentfilm.org.  Presented as part of the BFI’s Weimar Cinema Season.  With live piano accompaniment.  BFI Southbank, LondonLink

The Ancient Law (aka Das Alte Gesetz) (Dir. E A Dupont, Ger, 1923) (Screening format – DCP, 135 mins) In the mid 1800s in Galicia, Baruch Mayer (Ernst Deutsch), yearns to become an actor. Despite the expectation to follow in his father’s footsteps and become an orthodox rabbi, he breaks from tradition and leaves the shtetl in pursuit of his dream. Whilst performing in a traveling theatre troupe he meets the Austrian archduchess, Elisabeth Theresia (Henny Porten), who falls in love with the young man. With her support he joins the renowned Vienna’s Burg Theatre company where he soon rises to fame.  “With its complex portrayal of orthodoxy and emancipation, E. A. Dupont’s period film marks a highpoint of Jewish filmmaking in Germany. This new restoration marks the first time that a version corresponding to the lost 1920s German theatrical release will be shown, both in its original length, and with the colourisation digitally restored.” – Berlinale 68.Find out more at silentfilm.org Presented as part of the BFI’s Weimar Cinema Season.  With live piano accompaniment.  BFI Southbank, London Link

19 June

Prismatic Music: Films by  Germaine Dulac &  Joseph Bernard Germaine Dulac (1882-1942) was a French filmmaker and key figure in the historical avant-garde. A proponent of ‘pure cinema’ Dulac’s silent 16mm and 35mm films proposed an affinity with dance that anticipated the work of Maya Deren. Together Bernard and Dulac’s complex rhythms and shifting textures represent luminous highlights in the development of a non-narrative cinema.  Films include Disque 957, Germaine Dulac, 1928, 6 minutes, Digital; Étude Cinématographique sur une Arabesque, Germaine Dulac, 1929, 8 minutes, Digital; Thèmes et Variations, Germaine Dulac, 1928, 11 minutes, Digital.  Accompanied by 1970s and 1980s works from American experimental filmmaker Joseph Bernard. Introduced by Irish experimental film-maker Dean Kavanagh.  Irish Film Institute, Dublin Link

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Groβtadt) (Dir. Walter Ruttman, Ger, 1927) + Accident (Dir. Ernö Metzner, Ger, 1929)  (Screening format – DCP,   65/21mins)  Berlin is a visual symphony in five movements celebrating the Berlin of 1927: the people, the place, the everyday details of life on the streets. Director Walter Ruttman, an experimental filmmaker, approached cinema in similar ways to his Russian contemporary Dziga Vertoz, mixing documentary, abstract, and expressionist modes for a nonnarrative style that captured the life of his countrymen. But where Vertov mixed his observations with examples of the communist dream in action, Ruttman re-creates documentary as, in his own words, “a melody of pictures.” Within the loose structure of a day in the life of the city (with a prologue that travels from the country into the city on a barreling train), the film takes us from dawn to dusk, observing the silent city as it awakens with a bustle of activity, then the action builds and calms until the city settles back into sleep. But the city is as much the architecture, the streets, and the machinery of industry as it is people, and Ruttman weaves all these elements together to create a portrait in montage, the poetic document of a great European city captured in action. Held together by rhythm, movement, and theme, Ruttman creates a documentary that is both involving and beautiful to behold. Find out more atsensesofcinema.com . In Accident, an ordinary guy finds a coin in the street, but it really isn’t his lucky day. This radical satirical short portrays the city and its inhabitants as violent, anarchic and devoid of glamour. It was promptly banned. Find out more atimdb.com. Presented as part of the BFI’s Weimar Cinema Season.  Berlin features the recorded Edmund Meisel score while Accident comes with live piano accompaniment.  BFI Southbank, London Link

Lady Windermere’s Fan (Dir. Ernst Lubitsch, US, 1925) (Screening Format – not known, 89mins)    Ronald Colman has one of his first important screen roles as the slightly caddish Lord Darlington, who is in love with the very pretty–and very married–Lady Windermere (May McAvoy). The lady is rescued from disgrace at the hands of Darlington by the notorious Mrs. Erlynne (Irene Rich), who unbeknownst to everyone is Lady Windemere’s long-lost mother. Unable to rely upon Oscar Wilde’s epigrammatic dialogue to carry the day (this was, after all, the silent-film era), director Ernst Lubitsch substitutes visual wit for the verbal variety in his 1925 interpretation of Lady Windermere’s Fan.  The film was an enormous hit, and an instant candidate for the many “Ten Best” lists tabulated by the fan magazines of the era, and viewed nearly a hundred years later it remains a superb adaption. The characters and the story are Wilde’s, while the acting and the style are pure Lubitsch.  Find out more atsensesofcinema.com.  Presented by the Kennington Bioscope.  With live piano accompaniment.  Cinema Museum, Lambeth, London Link

22 June

Wonder of Creation(Dir. Hanns Walter Kornblum, Ger, 1925) (Screening format – not known, 92mins)  The extraordinary silent documentary, Wunder der Schöpfung (‘Wonder of Creation‘), is a unique document of human knowledge about the world and the universe in the 1920s. Fifteen special effects experts and nine cameramen were involved in the production of this beautifully tinted and toned film that combines documentary scenes, historical documents, fiction elements, animation scenes and educational impact.Wunder der Schöpfung is a classic example of German Kulturfilm, which predate documentaries as we know them today. They were often high-quality productions involving collaboration between mainstream film-makers and academics.Wunder der Schöpfung gives us a glimpse of astronomical knowledge circa 1925, it cleverly uses trick photography and animation to visualise scientific theories.  Find out more atwikipedia.org  Presented as part of the Glasgow Jazz Festival.  With live musical accompaniment by Herschel 36 (Stuart Brown – drums/electronics and Paul Harrison – keyboards/electronics)  Glasgow Science Centre, Glasgow   Link

23 June

The Joyless Street (Dir. G W Pabst, Ger, 1925) (Screening format – DCP, 151mins) The Joyless Street, based on the novel by Hugo Bettauer, directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst in Germany, and starring Greta Garbo in her second major role, is not only one of the most important films of the Weimar Republic, it is also one of the most spectacular censorship cases of the era. The story from the inflationary period in Vienna in the years immediately after World War I was considered too much of a provocation: nouveau riches currency and stock market speculators who wallow in Babylonian luxury, homeless and unemployed Lumpen-proletariat living in barns, women who sell their souls for a bit of fresh meat at the butcher’s, sexual orgies, bordellos and murders.  The film is often described as a morality story in which the ‘fallen woman’ suffers for her sins, while the more virtuous is rewarded. Pabst is especially sensitive to the plight of women in a world where exploitation is rife. Greta Garbo, as a wretchedly respectable middle-class daughter, radiates courage and vulnerability, but Asta Nielsen, playing a kept woman, devours the screen with her haunting despair. Find out more atsilentfilm.org . Presented as part of the BFI’s Weimar Cinema Season.  With live piano accompaniment.  BFI Southbank, London Link

People on Sunday (Dir. Robert Siodmak/Edgar G Ulmer, Ger, 1929) (Screening format – DCP, 74mins)  Famously, Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann worked with Siodmak on this landmark of realist filmmaking, in which non-professionals act out an ‘everyday’, uneventful story of several young Berliners using their Sunday to spend a flirtatious day together at a lake on the edge of the city. With its massive cast of unpaid extras enjoying the summer sun, this classic silent film feels remarkably modern. Find out more at archive.org.  Presented as part of the BFI’s Weimar Cinema Season.  With live piano accompaniment.  BFI Southbank, London Link

24 June

The Devious Path (aka Abwege) (Dir. GW Pabst, Ger, 1928) (Screening format – DCP, 98mins) An affluent lawyer (Gustav Diessl) neglects his wife (Brigitte Helm) and disapproves of her fashionable friends. Bored and sexually frustrated, she retaliates by abandoning herself to the pleasures of jazz-age Berlin. Featuring one of the most extraordinary, decadent nightclub scenes in all of Weimar cinema, this lesser-known film, now newly restored and ripe for rediscovery, sees Pabst on top form.  Find out more at cinetext.wordpress.com.  Presented as part of the BFI’s Weimar Cinema Season.  With live piano accompaniment.  BFI Southbank, LondonLink

25 June

Earth (Dir. Oleksandr Dovzhenko, USSR 1930) (Screening format – not known, 75 mins) Earth, the final part of Dovzhenko’s silent trilogy, is undoubtedly the most famous and controversial movie of the Ukrainian Soviet silent film heritage. Full of lyrical pantheism and utopian exaltation, it demonstrated the ambiguity of Ukrainian geopolitical choice in the late 1920s. The simple plot tells the story of a small Ukrainian village on the eve of collectivisation. Vasyl, the leader of the activist youth, is trying to engage villagers into the collective farm movement while waiting for a technical miracle: a tractor, the forerunner of the new era. Finally, he ploughs a boundary separating the private plots from the collective ones. This enthusiasm costs Vasyl his life, but makes him a martyr – a necessary sacrifice for the new social order.  Although Earth fits the tradition of Soviet propaganda films, Dovzhenko’s interest in the human condition and its bond with nature takes the film beyond the propaganda realm. As told by Dovzhenko, an ordinary tale of a class struggle becomes a universal philosophical parable about life and death.  Criticised severely for its naturalism, the film was banned nine days after its release in the Soviet Union and was given a credit in Ukraine only after Dovzhenko’s death. Earth hit the headlines only in 1958, when the International Referendum in Brussels praised the film as one of the best 12 films in the history of cinema. It has been voted one of the top ten silent films by The Guardian and The Observer.  Find out more at sensesofcinema.com  With recorded soundtrack.  Sands Cinema Club, Rotherhithe, London Link

26 – 30 June

One Week (Dir. Buster Keaton/Eddie Cline, 1920) + selected shorts (Screening format – not known, 19 mins)  One Week sees Buster and his new bride struggling with a pre-fabricated home unaware that his bride’s former suitor has renumbered all of the boxes.  Find out more atwikipedia.org .  With live musical accompaniment by Wurlitza.  Pilton Palais, Glastonbury Festival.  Link

27 June

The General (Dir. Buster Keaton/Clyde Bruckman, 1926) + TheHigh Sign(Dir. Edward F Cline/Buster Keaton, US, 1921) (Screening format – DVD, 75/21mins)  Widely considered one of the greatest films ever made and one of the most revered comedies of the silent era, Buster Keaton’s effortless masterpiece The General sees hapless Southern railroad engineer Johnny Gray (Keaton) facing off against Union soldiers during the American Civil War. When Johnny’s fiancée, Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack), is accidentally taken away while on a train stolen by Northern forces, Gray pursues the soldiers, using various modes of transportation in comic action scenes that highlight Keaton’s boundless, innovative wit and joyful, lighthearted dexterity, to reclaim the train and thereby save the South. Find out more at  busterkeaton.com .  In The High Sign, Buster Keaton plays a drifter who gets a job in a amusement park shooting gallery. Believing Buster is an expert marksman, both the murderous gang the Blinking Buzzards and the man they want to kill end up hiring him. The film ends with a wild chase through a house filled with secret passages. Find out more atsensesofcinema.com .  With live musical accompaniment from Meg Morley.  1901 Arts Club, Waterloo, London Link

29 June

The Joyless Street (Dir. G W Pabst, Ger, 1925) (Screening format – DCP, 151mins) The Joyless Street, based on the novel by Hugo Bettauer, directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst in Germany, and starring Greta Garbo in her second major role, is not only one of the most important films of the Weimar Republic, it is also one of the most spectacular censorship cases of the era. The story from the inflationary period in Vienna in the years immediately after World War I was considered too much of a provocation: nouveau riches currency and stock market speculators who wallow in Babylonian luxury, homeless and unemployed Lumpen-proletariat living in barns, women who sell their souls for a bit of fresh meat at the butcher’s, sexual orgies, bordellos and murders.  The film is often described as a morality story in which the ‘fallen woman’ suffers for her sins, while the more virtuous is rewarded. Pabst is especially sensitive to the plight of women in a world where exploitation is rife. Greta Garbo, as a wretchedly respectable middle-class daughter, radiates courage and vulnerability, but Asta Nielsen, playing a kept woman, devours the screen with her haunting despair. Find out more at silentfilm.org . Presented as part of the BFI’s Weimar Cinema Season.  With live piano accompaniment.  BFI Southbank, London Link

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Groβtadt) (Dir. Walter Ruttman, Ger, 1927) + Accident (Dir. Ernö Metzner, Ger, 1929)  (Screening format – DCP,   65/21mins)  Berlin is a visual symphony in five movements celebrating the Berlin of 1927: the people, the place, the everyday details of life on the streets. Director Walter Ruttman, an experimental filmmaker, approached cinema in similar ways to his Russian contemporary Dziga Vertoz, mixing documentary, abstract, and expressionist modes for a nonnarrative style that captured the life of his countrymen. But where Vertov mixed his observations with examples of the communist dream in action, Ruttman re-creates documentary as, in his own words, “a melody of pictures.” Within the loose structure of a day in the life of the city (with a prologue that travels from the country into the city on a barreling train), the film takes us from dawn to dusk, observing the silent city as it awakens with a bustle of activity, then the action builds and calms until the city settles back into sleep. But the city is as much the architecture, the streets, and the machinery of industry as it is people, and Ruttman weaves all these elements together to create a portrait in montage, the poetic document of a great European city captured in action. Held together by rhythm, movement, and theme, Ruttman creates a documentary that is both involving and beautiful to behold. Find out more atsensesofcinema.com . In Accident, an ordinary guy finds a coin in the street, but it really isn’t his lucky day. This radical satirical short portrays the city and its inhabitants as violent, anarchic and devoid of glamour. It was promptly banned. Find out more at imdb.com. Presented as part of the BFI’s Weimar Cinema Season.  Berlin features the recorded Edmund Meisel score while Accident comes with live piano accompaniment.  BFI Southbank, London Link

30 June

Pandora’s Box (Dir. G W Pabst, Ger, 1929) (Screening format – not known, 135mins) Based on two plays by the German author Frank Wedekind, Erdgeist (Earth Spirit, 1895), which Pabst himself had directed for the stage, and Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora’s Box, 1904), the silent drama follows the tumultuous life of the showgirl Lulu whose unselfconscious sexuality brings about the ruin of all those that fall for her and eventually her own.  In a daring move, Pabst chose a little known American actress over the more experienced Marlene Dietrich for the part of Lulu, a decision that made the young Louise Brooks an international star. Her innocent looks paired with her natural erotic allure and sense of movement – Brooks was also a dancer – perfectly matched Pabst’s idea of his heroine as unwitting seductress. Subjected to cuts to eliminate some of its “scandalous” content and unfavourably reviewed by critics at the time, it is now considered one of the boldest and most modern films of the Weimar era highlighting Pabst’s command of camera language and montage.  Find out more atsilentlondon.co.uk .With live musical accompaniment by Tony Judge. Jacaranda Records, Seel St, Liverpool Link

The Devious Path (aka Abwege) (Dir. GW Pabst, Ger, 1928) (Screening format – DCP, 98mins) An affluent lawyer (Gustav Diessl) neglects his wife (Brigitte Helm) and disapproves of her fashionable friends. Bored and sexually frustrated, she retaliates by abandoning herself to the pleasures of jazz-age Berlin. Featuring one of the most extraordinary, decadent nightclub scenes in all of Weimar cinema, this lesser-known film, now newly restored and ripe for rediscovery, sees Pabst on top form.  Find out more atcinetext.wordpress.com.  Presented as part of the BFI’s Weimar Cinema Season.  With live piano accompaniment.  BFI Southbank, LondonLink

Different from the Others (aka Anders als die Andern) (Dir. Richard Oswald, Ger, 1919) (Screening format – DCP, 50mins)  Released in 1919, and banned in 1920, Different From The Others explores a doomed relationship between a master violinist (Conrad Veidt) and his male student (Fritz Schulz) as their relationship is uncovered and they become a target for blackmailers.   One of the first gay-themed films in the history of cinema, this powerful plea for the decriminalisation of homosexuality, co-written by pioneering sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, sparked riots and censorship. With a fearless performance from Veidt, it packs an emotional and intellectual punch – revealing both Weimar Berlin’s flourishing gay subculture and the devastating consequences of mainstream intolerance.  Banned by Weimar and burned by the Nazis, only an incomplete version of  the original film survives.  Find out more at nytimes.com .  Presented as part of the BFI’s Weimar Cinema Season.  With live piano accompaniment.  BFI Southbank, London Link