Il sondaggio riservato alla grande comunità internazionale degli studiosi e degli appassionati di cinema muto lanciato da Silent London, seguitissimo blog della giornalista inglese Pamela Hutchinson (collaboratrice di testate quali The Guardian e Sight and Sound), ancora una volta premia le Giornate del Cinema Muto come migliore festival di cinema muto dell’anno. Se nel 2020 il titolo era arrivato per la 39^a Limited Edition, interamente on line, quest’anno il premio riguarda la 40^a edizione svoltasi in presenza al Teatro Comunale Giuseppe Verdi di Pordenone, a sua volta vincitore del titolo di migliore sala fra tutte quelle che hanno ospitato eventi di cinema muto.

Come precisa Silent London, i voti ricevuti in favore delle Giornate sono stati “una valanga”, e pochi rivali ha avuto anche l’evento speciale che ha chiuso il festival (il 9 ottobre, con replica il 10 ottobre), Casanova (1927) di Alexandre Volkoff restaurato dalla Cinémathèque française e presentato con la nuova partitura di Günter Buchwald eseguita dall’Orchestra San Marco di Pordenone, giudicato il migliore spettacolo dal vivo. Ricordiamo che Casanova con questo accompagnamento musicale uscirà in una versione su Dvd e Blu-ray realizzata dalle Giornate del Cinema Muto e la Cinémathèque française con Lobster Films.

Scorrendo la classifica delle diverse sezioni, troviamo il riconoscimento al direttore Jay Weissberg, che ha ottenuto una menzione d’onore come “eroe del cinema muto”, categoria nella quale sono stati votati anche i musicisti delle Giornate, con una segnalazione particolare per il percussionista tedesco Frank Bockius, sempre più presente negli accompagnamenti come partner musicale dei pianisti. Apprezzamenti anche per il fotografo del festival Valerio Greco.

La retrospettiva che le Giornate hanno dedicato alla produttrice e star austriaca Ellen Richter curata dagli studiosi Oliver Hanley e Philipp Stiasny è stata giudicata la scoperta per eccellenza del 2021 e il film Jokeren (Il jolly, 1928), presentato sia al Verdi che online, il migliore restauro dell’anno, ad opera di Det Danske Filminstitut, l’archivio nazionale danese.

Infine, nella categoria della migliore didascalia da un film muto, ha ottenuto il maggior numero di segnalazioni Miss Lulu Bett, presentato all’interno della rassegna dedicata alle sceneggiatrici americane, ma sono risultate memorabili anche le didascalie da altri film visti a Pordenone, come Fool’s Paradise di Cecil B. DeMille, sempre parte del programma sulle sceneggiatrici americane, Moral, della rassegna Ellen Richter, e Phil-for-Short, della rassegna Nasty Women.

I risultati del sondaggio con i vincitori di tutte le sezioni sono consultabili su Silent London, a questo link: https://silentlondon.co.uk/2022/02/11/the-silent-london-poll-of-2021-and-the-winners-are/

Foto: L’Orchestra San Marco di Pordenone diretta da Günter Buchwald accompagna il film Casanova (FR 1927) di Alexandre Volkoff, con Ivan Mosjoukine (sullo schermo) nella serata conclusiva della 40a edizione delle Giornate del Cinema Muto (Teatro Verdi di Pordenone, 2-9 ottobre 2021).
Credit: Fotografia di Valerio Greco.

L'articolo SILENT LONDON DECRETA ANCORA UNA VOLTA LE GIORNATE DI PORDENONE MIGLIORE FESTIVAL DI CINEMA MUTO E CASANOVA, L’EVENTO ORCHESTRALE CHE HA CHIUSO LA 40a EDIZIONE, IL MIGLIORE FRA GLI SPETTACOLI DI CINEMA MUTO DEL 2021. IL TEATRO VERDI VOTATO MIGLIORE SALA. proviene da Le Giornate del Cinema Muto.

Il 9 e il 10 ottobre scorso ha incantato il pubblico delle Giornate del Cinema Muto al Teatro Comunale Giuseppe Verdi di Pordenone, ripetendosi pochi giorni dopo al Festival Lumière di Lione, con la partitura orchestrale che ha composto e diretto per il film Casanova (1927) di Alexandre Volkoff, con Ivan Mosjoukine, nella versione restaurata dalla Cinémathèque française. Parliamo di Günter A. Buchwald, musicista polistrumentista, compositore e direttore d’orchestra di Friburgo nonché uno dei musicisti specializzati che ogni anno accompagnano dal vivo le proiezioni delle Giornate e che il prossimo dicembre riceverà a Stoccarda, nel corso del 27° Filmschau, il Baden-Württembergischen Ehrenfilmpreis, premio onorario per il cinema.

Annunciando il riconoscimento, la giuria ha definito Buchwald una “star” del cinema muto, uno dei fautori della sua riscoperta, iniziata nel 1978, un musicista richiesto in tutto il mondo che insieme alla comunità internazionale degli archivi cinematografici contribuisce alla salvaguardia del cinema muto rendendolo accessibile al pubblico.

Della sua ultraquarantennale carriera, nel corso della quale ha accompagnato oltre 3500 film muti in numerosi festival internazionali, insieme alle tante improvvisazioni al pianoforte e al violino al Teatro Zancanaro di Sacile e al Teatro Verdi di Pordenone ricordiamo la sua direzione dell’accompagnamento orchestrale per i film di Chaplin The Circus (Il circo) nel 2011, City Lights (Luci della città) nel 2014 e The Kid (Il monello) nel 2019. Con la Zerorchestra ha portato in tour, toccando numerose località del Friuli Venezia Giulia, nel 2016 Show People (Maschere di celluloide) di King Vidor, con Marion Davies, e nel 2017 The Wind (Il vento) di Victor Sjöström, con Lillian Gish.

Tornando a Casanova, uscirà nei prossimi mesi un dvd/blu-ray realizzato dalle Giornate del Cinema Muto in collaborazione con la Cinémathèque française e pubblicato dalla Lobster, con l’accompagnamento di Günter Buchwald eseguito dall’Orchestra San Marco di Pordenone registrato al Teatro Verdi lo scorso gennaio.

L'articolo PREMIO PER IL CINEMA AL MAESTRO GÜNTER BUCHWALD proviene da Le Giornate del Cinema Muto.

A selection of films from the 40th edition of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, only just concluded at the Teatro Verdi of Pordenone, will be screened in Paris under the banner “Giornate del Cinema Muto, sélection du festival de Pordenone 2021”, organized by the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé in collaboration with the festival, running from 13 to 26 October.

The programme, selected by Samantha Leroy, reflects the festival’s emphasis on the role of women not just in front but also behind the camera. Of the eleven titles chosen, three –Aberglaube, Lola Montez, die Tänzerin des Königs and Der Juxbaron – were included in the retrospective dedicated to rediscovering the Jewish Austrian actress-producer Ellen Richter. The spotlight is also on American women screenwriters with A Temperamental Wife, written by Anita Loos, and Miss Lulu Bett (1921), written by Clara Beranger, while with Carmine Gallone’s L’ombra di un trono (1920), adapted from the popular French novel Fleur d’ombre by Charles Foleÿ, audiences can appreciate the talents of Polish-born diva Soava Gallone, wife and muse of the director.

Westerns also find a spot on the programme with two films testifying to the genre’s adaptability: the buoyant Don Quickshot of the Rio Grande, and The Man from Kangaroo, the latter filmed in the Australian outback as a vehicle for Olympic athlete Snowy Baker. Completing the salute are three Japanese-themed Vitagraph shorts from 1910.
Info: http://www.fondation-jeromeseydoux-pathe.com/pordenone_2021_actu

Not to be forgotten: on Wednesday, 13 October the Festival Lumière of Lyon will be showcasing the closing event of this year’s Pordenone Silent Film Festival, the Cinémathèque française’s restored copy of Alexandre Volkoff’s spectacular Casanova starring Ivan Mosjoukine, featuring a new score by Günter Buchwald, who’ll also be conducting the Orchestre National de Lyon.

L'articolo A PARISIAN RENDEZVOUS WITH THE PORDENONE SILENT FILM FESTIVAL proviene da Le Giornate del Cinema Muto.

LE ANTICIPAZIONI DEL DIRETTORE JAY WEISSBERG PER IL 2022.  

Dopo l’edizione 2020 svoltasi interamente online, sulle difficoltà e le limitazioni tuttora presenti a causa della pandemia ha prevalso nella comunità degli appassionati e degli studiosi la voglia di ritrovarsi a Pordenone per celebrare insieme, al Teatro Verdi di Pordenone, la 40^a edizione delle Giornate del Cinema Muto. Risultato tanto più gratificante per gli organizzatori se si pensa che oltre la metà di chi frequenta il festival proviene dall’estero, una prevalenza ancora più pronunciata quest’anno con una percentuale di presenze straniere di oltre il 63% sul totale degli accreditati.

Pur essendo già tempo di tracciare bilanci, l’edizione della ripartenza non può dirsi ancora definitivamente conclusa. Oggi alle 16.30 è infatti in programma la replica dell’evento speciale di chiusura, Casanova di Alexandre Volkoff, con il divo Ivan Mosjoukine, nella copia restaurata dalla Cinémathèque française e con la partitura di Günter Buchwald, eseguita dal vivo in prima mondiale dall’Orchestra San Marco di Pordenone diretta dallo stesso Buchwald. Due ore e mezza di immagini spettacolari, girate in buona parte in una Venezia elegante e sfarzosa, a ricreare l’atmosfera settecentesca in cui sono ambientate le imprese del famoso libertino Giacomo Casanova. Dopo Pordenone, il film sarà presentato con la stessa partitura al Festival Lumière di Lione il prossimo 13 ottobre.

Il direttore Jay Weissberg si è dichiarato molto soddisfatto del risultato artistico, raggiunto come sempre grazie alla collaborazione dei curatori delle diverse sezioni e degli archivi nazionali – in particolare la Cineteca del Friuli, la Cineteca Italiana, il Museo Nazionale del Cinema – e internazionali, fra cui la Library of Congress, il Museum of Modern Art, George Eastman Museum, La Cinémathèque française, Lobster Films, EYE Filmmuseum, Deutsches Film Istitute e Filmmuseum, Det Danske Filminstitut, Gosfilmofond, National Film & Sound Archive of Australia, Korean Film Archive, Národní filmový archiv, Filmoteka Narodowa-Instytut Audiowizualny. Gli intervalli più lunghi fra uno spettacolo e l’altro per la sanificazione della sala hanno inciso sul numero di film presentati ma hanno concesso più tempo per incontrarsi e dialogare, anche questo un aspetto fondamentale del festival in cui proprio dalle conversazioni fra studiosi e archivisti nascono tante collaborazioni e progetti di restauro, per non parlare del piacere ritrovato di stare insieme.

Eccelsa la qualità degli accompagnamenti musicali mai così spesso accolti dal pubblico con standing ovation e frutto certamente del talento e della professionalità dei musicisti ma anche della loro gioia nel ritrovarsi a suonare insieme e ispirarsi reciprocamente. Oltre alle straordinarie performance dei musicisti del festival – Neil Brand, Günter Buchwald, Philip Carli, Daan van den Hurk, Stephen Horne, Maud Nelissen, Donald Sosin, John Sweeney e Gabriel Thibaudeau, spesso in coppia con il percussionista Frank Bockius – si segnalano il trio esibitosi nella serata di apertura sotto la guida del Maestro Carl Davis per Lady Windermere’s Fan di Ernst Lubitsch, l’ensemble sloveno che ha eseguito la partitura di Andrej Goričar per Erotikon di Gustav Machatý, evento speciale di metà settimana e naturalmente l’Orchestra San Marco di Pordenone impegnata nell’accompagnamento di Casanova.

Insieme alla riscoperta di una personalità importante come Ellen Richter, la retrospettiva che ha riscosso maggiore successo è stata quella dedicata alle sceneggiatrici americane, nell’ambito della quale sono stati presentati molti capolavori fra cui Fool’s Paradise, sceneggiato da Beulah Marie Dix e Sada Cowan e diretto da Cecil B. DeMille, e Kentucky Pride, scritto da Dorothy Yost e diretto da John Ford, ma ha strappato applausi a scena aperta anche Miss Lulu Bett, sceneggiato da Clara Beranger. Sottolinea il direttore che “se da una parte continuiamo giustamente a celebrare il ruolo delle donne, tracciando una linea di congiunzione fra passato e presente, è altrettanto importante presentare alcuni film scomodi, che possiamo definire razzisti, come quest’anno il riscoperto “blackface” Ham and Eggs at the Front (Due negri al fronte). Si tratta di film che fanno parte della storia del cinema e che sarebbe pericoloso nascondere o cancellare. Vanno invece contestualizzati nel passato e confrontati con il presente, rispetto al quale possono fungere da ammonimento affinché la storia non si ripeta”.

Venendo ai numeri, certo non tutti quelli che avrebbero voluto hanno potuto raggiungere Pordenone, a partire dal direttore emerito delle Giornate, David Robinson, che come molti altri ha seguito il festival online. Gli accrediti in presenza hanno comunque superato la soglia di 500, un numero ovviamente inferiore rispetto alle edizioni pre-pandemia ma che, già così, ha determinato il tutto o quasi tutto esaurito alle proiezioni in un Teatro Verdi a capienza ridotta a causa delle norme anti-Covid in vigore fino al 10 ottobre. Fra gli stranieri si conferma la tradizionale prevalenza di statunitensi (52), ma alte presenze si registrano anche da Germania (46), Francia (37) e Regno Unito (26), seguiti da Olanda, Canada e altri paesi.

Si conferma anche il successo del festival online su MYmovies con una selezione di film fra cui l’evento di pre-apertura Maciste all’Inferno presentato al Teatro Zancanaro il 1° ottobre con la musica di Teho Teardo e Zerorchestra e riproposto online sabato 9 ottobre e con i quotidiani incontri con l’autore: 650 le adesioni per un totale di 200.000 minuti di visione. Anche qui dominano gli Stati Uniti, con oltre il 27% sul totale delle visioni per titolo.

Gli accessi al sito del festival www.giornatedelcinemamuto.it sono stati 195.000 da inizio settembre, 90.000 nella settimana del festival, per l’85% dall’estero, con utenti equamente divisi fra uomini e donne. Fra i dati più significativi, la percentuale di giovani: il 65% degli accessi è infatti di persone fra i 18 e i 34 anni (30% fra i 18 e i 24 anni, 35% fra i 25 e i 34 anni).
Importante anche la presenza delle Giornate del Cinema Muto sui social. La pagina Facebook ha registrato 5.000.000 di impression da inizio settembre, 2.600.000 nel solo periodo del festival. 140.000 impression e 4.000 interazioni per il profilo Instagram da inizio settembre, 47.000 impression e 2.000 interazioni nella settimana del festival. Per l’account Twitter, 140.000 impression da inizio settembre, 55.000 durante il festival.

La 41^a edizione delle Giornate del Cinema Muto, in programma dal 1° all’8 ottobre 2022, proporrà fra le altre cose, insieme alla già annunciata rassegna “Ruritania” di cui quest’anno si è visto un primo assaggio – L’ombra di un trono di Carmine Gallone, con Soava Gallone, altra diva che merita di essere riscoperta –, una sezione monografica dedicata a Norma Talmadge e, fra i nuovi restauri, il bellissimo Romance di Clarence Brown, ultimo film muto e allo stesso tempo primo film sonoro con Greta Garbo. La speranza più grande è di poter festeggiare, insieme ai 40 anni del festival (nato nel 1982), il ritorno definitivo alla normalità.

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto sono realizzate grazie al sostegno della Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia, del Ministero della Cultura – Direzione Generale per il Cinema, del Comune di Pordenone, della Camera di Commercio Pordenone-Udine e della Fondazione Friuli.

L'articolo CONCLUSA LA 40a EDIZIONE DELLE GIORNATE DEL CINEMA MUTO DI PORDENONE proviene da Le Giornate del Cinema Muto.

Casanova by Alexandre Volkoff was one of the greatest and most expensive blockbusters of the silent film era and stimulated European and French filmmaking in its constant battle with Hollywood. The film is two and a half hours long (the restored copy from the Cinémathèque française adds 30 minutes to the known version) and offers a grand spectacle as it narrates the famous libertine’s life story, allowing the director to reconstruct eighteenth-century Venice in all its sensual decadence.
The film can be divided into three parts: first we are introduced to Casanova, then the focus is on his relationship with Catherine the Great of Russia, and lastly we return to Venice for the famous Carnival scene in Saint Mark’s Square (shot at night with more than 1,500 extras) and his escape from the Doge’s Palace. The title role is played by Ivan Mosjoukine, one of the greatest figures of the silent era whose physique and acting skills were compared to Rudolph Valentino’s. Mosjoukine came from a well-to-do Russian family which fled to Paris after the Bolshevik Revolution, as did Volkoff. He soon became known for his remarkable expressivity; but his luck ran out with the advent of sound, as he wasn’t fluent in French, and he soon left the spotlight. Recalling the fate of Casanova, Mosjoukine died in much reduced circumstances in Paris in 1939.
The Volkoff screening will take place today at 9PM and will close the 40th edition of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival. There will be an additional screening at the Teatro Verdi on the following day Sunday, October 10th at 4:30PM, again with the music composed by Günter A. Buchwald, who directs the Orchestra San Marco of Pordenone. In the upcoming months Lobster, in collaboration with the Cinémathèque française and the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, will release a Blu-ray disc of Casanova with Buchwald’s score.

The programme for Saturday, October 9th includes George Marshall’s Don Quickshot of the Rio Grande (1927), presented at 2:30PM at the Teatro Verdi with accompaniment by Neil Brand. The film has as its hero a romantic cowboy inspired by Cervantes’ masterpiece Don Quixote to seek adventure and fight for the oppressed (especially young women). The film was a success, even if George Marshall didn’t recall it as a pleasant experience, as he told Kevin Brownlow years later: “I had no trouble with any film except Don Quickshot. All because I made fun of the character … fun of the western picture.” Jack Hoxie plays the title role: born on Native American land and raised on the reservations, he became a skilled horse rider. Younger audiences loved him as he was always accompanied by his Appaloosa horse Scout and his dog Old Bunk. Don Quickshot of the Rio Grande will finally be screened in its entirety after almost a century thanks to the work of the Packard Humanities Institute of Santa Clarita, California.

The Ellen Richter retrospective ends on Saturday, October 9th at 5:30PM with Willi Wollf’s Der Juxbaron (The Imaginary Baron), with piano accompaniment by Daan van den Hurk. The 1927 film is the only Ellen Richter silent production in which she doesn’t act. The young Marlene Dietrich is seen in her first sizeable supporting role, complete with monocle, necktie, and a flapper look. Der Juxbaron presents itself as a classic comedy of errors, a light-hearted mixture of theatrical set pieces, flirtations, music, and carnival. The film follows the comic (mis)adventures of a poor street musician who is roped into posing as an eccentric nobleman. He and his antics are rapturously received by the members of a bourgeois family desperate to mingle with the aristocracy. The daughter of the family (Marlene Dietrich) takes a fancy to the baron, assuming him to be immensely wealthy. The “joke baron” of the title is played by actor-director Reinhold Schünzel, who up to the mid-1920s was often typecast as a villain (as in Richter’s Der Flug um den Erdball), only to later become one of Weimar Germany’s most popular comic actors, as well as a director of several highly successful comedies.

The online programme for today starting at 5PM (Italian time) on MYmovies offers three Japanese short films by Vitagraph from 1910, reflecting Western fascination in Japanese subjects. Musical accompaniment is by John Sweeney. At 9PM, in Guido Brignone’s Maciste all’Inferno (1926), screened in honour of the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante, the strong man finds himself fighting demons in a baroque spectacle of Hell. Music by Teho Teardo is performed by the Zerorchestra.

L'articolo THE LEGENDARY CASANOVA proviene da Le Giornate del Cinema Muto.

LAST YEAR’S WINNERS VERA GYUREY AND J.B. KAUFMAN
WILL ALSO RECEIVE THE AWARD IN PERSON

Every year, the Pordenone Silent Film Festival assigns an international prize, the Jean Mitry Award, to individuals and institutions who have distinguished themselves in the work of recovering and enhancing film heritage. Established by the Province of Pordenone in 1986, the award has now reached its 36th edition and has been supported since 2017 by the Fondazione Friuli. The award will be delivered by the Fondazione’s vice-president Bruno Malattia on today at 9PM at the Teatro Comunale Giuseppe Verdi in Pordenone during the 40th edition of the festival. Alongside this year’s winners, the archivist and scholar Kae Ishihara and Ronald Grant & Martin Humphries, co-founders of The Cinema Museum in London, the prize will be delivered also to Hungarian historian and archivist Vera Gyürey and American independent scholar J.B. Kaufman, the winners of last year’s edition who were unable to accept their prizes in person due to Covid-19.

Kae Ishihara (Ph.D. in Archival Science) studied at the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York. She founded the Film Preservation Society, Tokyo (FPS) in 2001 and has been promoting the importance of film preservation through activities such as “Adopt-a-Film”, which aims at the discovery, restoration and screenings of long-lost Japanese silent films, the community-based film archiving project “Bunkyo Film Archive”, and “Film Salvation Project” to save films and videotapes damaged in the recent earthquake and tsunami; she is also a driving force behind Home Movie Day in Japan since 2003. She teaches part time at Japanese universities and is also the author of History of Film Archiving in Japan (Bigaku Shuppan: Tokyo, 2018), which received the Hiroko Nogami Memorial Award for Art Documentation in 2019.

Ronald Grant and Martin Humphries co-founded The Cinema Museum in London in 1984, now based in the Master’s House of the Old Lambeth Workhouse, the place Chaplin had to enter several times in his youth. Set in historic surroundings in Kennington, close to Elephant & Castle, the Museum houses a unique collection of artifacts, memorabilia, photos and posters, books, film journals and equipment that preserves the history and grandeur of cinema from the 1890s to the present day. The Cinema Museum’s collection was founded from Ronald and Martin’s own private collection.
Though unfunded, the Museum, which is a registered charity since 1986, has been offering guided tours and a full programme of events, including silent film screenings with musical accompaniment for which Silent London awarded the Museum as “best venue for silent film” in 2018 and 2020. The Cinema Museum is currently in danger as the old Lambeth workhouse sits on a larger piece of land which has been purchased by property developers. The Museum has been involved in a 15-year-old battle to rescue this beautiful but crumbling grade 2 listed building. The petition “Save the Cinema Museum” aims to ensure that it remains open for public and community use and provides a permanent home for The Cinema Museum. The Jean Mitry Awards testifies to the Pordenone Silent Film Festival’s support of the Museum and its intense and worthy activity.

As a Hungarian language and literature teacher, Vera Gyürey has been promoting cinema in high schools since the 1960s. She was appointed in 1985 by the Magyar Nemzeti Filmarchívum, Hungary’s national film archive, and became the institution’s director from 1990 to 2011, playing a pivotal role in the conservation and restoration of the Hungarian film heritage. Az utolsó éjszaka [The Last Night] by Jenő Janovics from 1917 was one of her restoration projects during her tenure and later the film was screened at Pordenone in 2002.

Film historian J.B. Kaufman is one of the greatest connoisseurs of Walt Disney. He is the author of Walt in Wonderland, co-written with Russell Merritt (Jean Mitry award in 2018) and winner of the prestigious Kraszna Krausz Award. The book was published by the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in 1992, during the retrospective dedicated to Disney’s silent period. His second volume, Silly Symphonies, was published in 2006 by the Cineteca del Friuli. Walt Disney’s daughter Diana entrusted J.B. Kaufman with the authorship of several books including South of the Border with Disney and a definitive story of her father’s two masterpieces Snow White and Pinocchio. Kaufman has been also a recurring contributor to the journal Griffithiana and the Giornate’s Griffith Project.

L'articolo THE JEAN MITRY AWARD 2021 GOES TO KAE ISHIHARA AND RONALD GRANT & MARTIN HUMPHRIES proviene da Le Giornate del Cinema Muto.

ALSO ON FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8^TH JOHN FORD’S KENTUCKY PRIDE, SCRIPTED BY DOROTHY YOST 

Max Linder could be considered a patron of the Giornate. Back in 1982, when little was being said about silent cinema, Pordenone’s Cinemazero and the Cineteca del Friuli launched a small retrospective honouring the great French comedian; it was attended by a few historians and critics. The event was a rediscovery, its success prompting the organizers to develop and deepen the exploration and study of cinema from its origins to the sound era. Max Linder was the first successful international comedian – Chaplin mentions him as a great influence – and he created the elegant and worldly character of Max, donning a black moustache, top hat and white gloves in the Paris of the Belle Époque. Linder was an actor, director and screenwriter who worked on more than 500 films, most of which have been lost. Max Der Zirkuskönig (King of the Circus) was amongst them, but thanks to a complex reconstruction with copies assembled from many archives, the film was saved by Lobster Films.
For Max Der Zirkuskönig, Linder was hired by the newly instituted Vita Film, an Austrian company that hoped the French star’s presence would help them break into the international market. The film did indeed do very well in many countries – unlike Linder, whose instability led to the death of his young wife and his suicide. The world premiere will take place today at 9PM at the Teatro Verdi of Pordenone alongside the Jean Mitry Awards ceremony. The Festival celebrates its 40th edition by having its patron on the official poster alongside Vilma Banky, his co-star in the film. Neil Brand (piano) and Frank Bockius (percussion) will provide the live musical performance for Max Der Zirkuskönig.

In the retrospective on American women screenwriters Kentucky Pride (1925) stands out because of its director’s name, John Ford. While the film is notable for its talking horses – a brilliant idea of screenwriter Dorothy Yost, who would subsequently write for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers – the fact that it was by the greatest director (according to Orson Welles) should be an incentive to watch this very rare film. The screening is at 2:30PM at the Teatro Verdi with Philip Carli playing the piano. The film was restored by the Museum of Modern Art with funding from Twentieth Century Fox. Directed by a barely thirty-year-old Ford, Kentucky Pride already showcases his key themes: duty, pride in tradition, love of nature and, particularly in his Westerns, the constant presence of horses. The film’s protagonist is Virginia, who narrates to her fellow horses, the citizens of Kentucky and the audience. One of Virginia’s friends was the legendary Man o’ War, whose fame and triumphs garnered him the title of the greatest racehorse of the twentieth century. The human cast boasts the presence of Henry B. Walthall, known for his partnership with D. W. Griffith and eventually with Ford himself. Walthall was one of the greatest actors of all time, a personality that just leaped out from the screen, as Ford declared in an interview with Peter Bogdanovich.
If Kentucky Pride is seen from the horses’ perspective, then the film preceding it, Up in the Air After Alligators (1919), is from the point of view of a crocodile. The short is part of a series of 50 travelogues for a sports magazine and is a great example of the writing of Katharine Hilliker (1885–1965).
 
In the afternoon, at 5:30PM, the Giornate will screen three Japanese Vitagraph short films from 1910, when the growing power of the Japanese empire began to look like a threat to the United States. Many American films showed the same anxiety, but these three Vitagraph shorts approach the country through a different lens, starting with the casting of mainly Japanese actors. The titles include Ito, the Beggar Boy, from 1910, rediscovered in Warsaw’s Filmoteka Narodowa – Instytut Audiowizualny (FINA) collections.
To complete the “Japanese” programme, we have two Russian Pathé shorts from 1913, containing the sole known moving pictures of dancer and actor Ohta Hisa, known by her stage name, Hanako (1868–1945). Hisa was a diminutive Japanese performer (some say she was little more than 4 feet 6 inches feet tall) whose travels through Europe and America earned her success, especially in France, where Rodin made numerous sculptures of her. The films of her shows in Moscow are by the Russian cinema pioneer Yakov Protazanov. John Sweeney will accompany on piano.

Friday opens at 10:30AM with another restoration by Lobster Films, Der Flug um der Erdball (The Flight Around the World, 1925), directed by Willi Wolff and starring Ellen Richter. The film will be screened in two parts, with live musical performances by Günter Buchwald and Stephen Horne respectively. The Film-Kurier critic wrote that this was not only Ellen Richter’s best film, but also the best German travel and adventure film.

The online programme of today on MYmovies starting at 9PM (Italian time) presents the wonderful Moral with Ellen Richter. In our last book presentation – as always online, starting at 5PM – Alberto Anile will discuss his book Alberto Sordi (Edizioni Sabinae, 2020), a close look at the life of the Italian actor and director, rich in archival material. The Associazione Italiana per le Ricerche di Storia del Cinema (AIRSC) presents Immagine: note di cinema 20-21 (Persiani 20-21), the latest two volumes of the oldest Italian journal for film lovers and the association’s official publication.

L'articolo THE PORDENONE SILENT FILM FESTIVAL CELEBRATES ITS 40TH EDITION WITH MAX LINDER proviene da Le Giornate del Cinema Muto.

EARLIER, A SCREENING OF CARMINE GALLONE’S RARE THE SHADOW OF A THRONE WITH SOAVA GALLONE, DISCOVERED IN THE PRAGUE FILM ARCHIVE

Without a doubt Pordenone’s 40th edition of the Giornate del Cinema Muto has introduced us to a great figure of German cinema from the 20s. Ellen Richter was an actress capable of easily switching from one genre to the next, gifted with a magnetic personality that would, figuratively speaking, pierce the screen with each performance. Showing today at the Teatro Verdi, Moral (1928) sees Richter in the starring role of a leader of a theatrical troupe who is banished from a small town after attempting to unleash a Berlin revue considered to be too saucy by the locals. Richter’s Ninon d’Hauteville finds work as a piano teacher and the very same townsmen who shamed her are the ones lining up to take her music lessons. As revenge, Ninon secretly records their visits. A memorable sequence sees a client locked in a bathroom and attempting to destroy incriminating evidence by shredding the film and flushing it down piece by piece. Showing before Moral we have Die Schönsten Beine von Berlin (Saucy Suzanne), taking us into the world of revues which Richter and her husband Willi Wolff came from.

The Giornate will be screening The Shadow of a Throne (1921), directed by Carmine Gallone, one of Italy’s most notable and prolific filmmakers whose long career spanned from 1914 to 1962 and whose film looks forward to the festival’s Ruritania programme next year. A fictional country situated between central Europe and the Balkans, Ruritania prompted a series of genres such as adventure, fable, romance, spy thriller and court drama in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Its birth was in many ways due to the success of popular literature and the public’s fascination with Europe’s royal families. Soava Gallone, the director’s wife since 1911, is the star of The Shadow of a Throne and was Gallone’s muse during the silent era.
Screening before the Gallone is a short film presented by the Cineteca del Friuli, Sign of the Black Lily (1913), an Italian detective story with an impressive foreign distribution.
As part of the Nasty Women programme, don’t miss the feature Phil-For-Short (1919), screening at 2:30PM. Directed by Oscar Apfel, it stars Evelyn Greeley as a rebellious tomboy who falls for a misogynist. The hilarious dialogue is penned by screenwriter Clara Beranger, whom we already met with the screenplay for Miss Lulu Bett. Also on Thursday is Le Ménage Dranem (1912), a short on the revolutionary theme of the feminism and its consequences: it records Monsieur Dranem while he cooks, cleans and sews “like an elephant trying to pass a thread through a needle”, while his militant spouse walks around in slacks, smokes a pipe, downs pints of beer, plays cards at the park and attacks her fearful husband.
Beginning at 5:30PM the Korean programme presents two silent films from the sound era. First, a crime melodrama from 1948, Geomsa-Wa Yeoseonsaeng [A Public Prosecutor and a Teacher]. Korea in the aftermath of World War II saw its film industry on its knees and returning to the silent form as a way to save costs. Korea’s last byeonsa narrates the film, the equivalent of the Japanese benshi narrators. The second film, Han Seongsimui Him [The Power of Sincerity] is a short from 1935 commissioned by the film department of the Japanese general governorship in Korea in an effort to urge citizens to pay taxes.
The two films forming part of the Nasty Women retrospective will also be available online, as always on MYmovies from 9PM (Italian time). For the book presentations, online at 5PM, Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi from the EYE Filmmuseum of Amsterdam will present the DVD/Blu-ray disc of Filibus: The Mysterious Air Pirate, a film that combines thriller, feminism and steampunk. Katharina Loew, author of Special Effects and German Silent Film, will speak on the influence that special effects had on German silent cinema.

L'articolo THE ELLEN RICHTER PROGRAMME CONTINUES WITH “MORAL” proviene da Le Giornate del Cinema Muto.

ALSO SCREENING THE “BLACKFACE” COMEDY HAM AND EGGS AT THE FRONT, REDISCOVERED AT THE CINETECA ITALIANA AND LA BATTAGLIA DALL’ASTICO AL PIAVE, RESTORED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF UDINE

It seems impossible to fathom that the viewing of Erotikon today could cause any scandals. But that is precisely what happened when it was released in 1929, inciting a revolution that to this day is considered to be fundamental in the link between eroticism and cinema. Erotikon is penned by the enfant terrible of Czech cinema Gustav Machatý, with an uncredited screenwriting collaboration with poet Vítěszlav Nezvav, and will be screened today at 9PM at the Teatro Verdi in the 40th edition of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival. The film perfectly marries an avant garde style with traditional storytelling, thus offering a blend of European artistic trends in the late 20s, from modernism to art déco to surrealism. Positive reviews (the audience’s approval derived from the film’s willingness to discuss taboo subjects) came mostly thanks to Václav Vich’s wonderful cinematography: the drops of rain fusing into a single stream gliding down the window pane has become a staple image of film history. The choice of casting was also pivotal, beginning with the film’s leading lady Ita Rina, Slovenia’s first ever film star. Born in the small town of Divaccia near Trieste, then still a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Rina moved with her family to Ljubljana shortly after World War I. Despite her mother’s admonitions, Rina moved to Berlin to pursue her passion for theatre and cinema, quickly landing small acting parts before her fateful encounter with Machatý. Following the film’s success, Rina received many offers from Hollywood, which she declined in part because of her husband’s lack of enthusiasm (she married in 1931 and converted from catholicism to serbian-orthodox Christianity). A different fate was reserved for the lead actress in Machatý’s second feature, Ecstasy (1932), who flew to America and changed her name from Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler to Hedy Lamarr, never looking back. Ita Rina’s luck waned after the success of Erotikon until 1940, when she officially retired from film. She attempted re-entry in the post-War period, but the Socialist Republic of Slovenia had no use for her. In a letter sent to Tito, Rina complains about her exile and avenges her artistic merits, garnering little sympathy in doing so. Her final appearance on screen takes place in 1960 in The War, a Yugoslavian film written by Cesare Zavattini.
Back to Erotikon, it is important to note Italian actor Luigi Serventi in the role of Andrea’s (Ita Rina) husband. Originally theatre trained, Serventi had reached peak popularity in his homeland by playing the romantic lead to the biggest stars of the times. He moved to Germany in 1923 and was able to replicate the same levels of success he achieved in Italy.
An honorable mention goes to the anonymous actress who briefly appears in her birthday suit in the role of Andrea’s lover, stealing the title from Hedy Kiesler /Lamarr as the first nude in cinema.
Erotikon will be shown with a live musical performance by Slovenska Kinoteka and Andrej Goričar who directs the Orchestra of the Imaginary of Ljubljana.
Wednesday morning at 10:30AM opens with two films that are part of the women screenwriters retrospective: Maie B. Havey with the short film A Sea Mystery (1916), and Clara S. Beranger, William C. De Mille’s partner and wife, whom he met on the set of Miss Lulu Bett (1921), which is also featured in the programme.

In the afternoon at 2PM, following a screening of a recently rediscovered episode of the series Who’s Guilty?, we are showing Ham and Eggs at the Front, an interesting find dating from 1927 from the Italian Cinematheque of Milan, where it was found and restored as the only known copy of the film. It is a striking example of ‘blackface’, where the black characters are played by heavily made up white actors. The film itself is quite ambivalent, one side flaunting racist prejudices, the other side championing the heroic feats of the film’s titular soldiers, nicknamed “Ham” and “Eggs”. The film is a delirious comedy seen through today’s lens, with Myrna Loy playing a Senegalese seductress. The comedic scenes between the characters played by Tom Wilson e Heinie Conklin go hand in hand with death omens, as shown in the exhilarating final sequence set on a hot air balloon paired with scenes of them being chased by skeletons.
The afternoon ends with an important document on World War I, La battaglia dall’Astico al Piave, an Italian Military production showcasing images of the decisive events of the battle on the Piave between June 14th and 30th, 1918. Footage of the flight over Vienna led by Gabriele D’Annunzio, the Austro-Hungarian defeat and General Armando Diaz’s victory announcement are all shown in the film. This new restoration is curated by the University of Udine, with the collaboration of the Cineteca del Friuli, Istituto Luce, Kinoatelje, Cineteca Italiana, Museo Nazionale del Cinema and Lobster Films and is the result of a year’s worth of work focused on the philological reconstruction and restoration of the collected materials. Following the Giornate del Cinema Muto premiere, the film will tour in the cities of Udine, Rome, Turin and other Italian cities in celebration of the centenary of the Unknown Soldier.

The online programme for today offers the Korean film A Public Prosecutor and a Teacher (1948), available on MYmovies from 9PM (Italian time). The film is peculiar as Korean cinema reverted to silent films in the aftermath of World War II when they lacked means, and it is narrated with a voice over by an authentic byeonsa, the Korean equivalent of Japanese benshi narrators. Starting at 5PM, the meetings with the author are dedicated to two big French and global silent film era personalities: Max Linder, with The Rise and Fall of Max Linder: The First Cinema Celebrity by Lisa Stein Haven and Catherine Cormon; and director Abel Gance, whose correspondence with Charles Pathé is collected in A. Gance, Ch. Pathè Correspondance 1918-1955, curated by Elodie Tamayo.

L'articolo THE PROVOCATIVE MASTERPIECE EROTIKON proviene da Le Giornate del Cinema Muto.