The turbulent life and professional career of vaudeville actor and silent screen horror star Lon Chaney (1883-1930), the man of a thousand faces; bearer of many personal misfortunes that even his great success could not mitigate.
The epic life story of Alice Guy-Blaché (1873–1968), a French screenwriter, director and producer, true pioneer of cinema, the first person who made a narrative fiction film; author of hundreds of movies, but banished from history books. Ignored and forgotten. At last remembered.
A documentary that details the process of restoring 270 of the 520 lost films of pioneering director Georges Méliès, all orchestrated by a Franco-American collaboration between Lobster Films, the National Film Center, and the Library of Congress.
Count Moffat becomes infatuated with Nana, a presumptuous stage actress, vulgar, hypocritical and promiscuous, willing to do anything to succeed.
Long treated with indifference by critics and historians, British silent cinema has only recently undergone the reevaluation it has long deserved, revealing it to be far richer than previously acknowledged. This documentary, featuring clips from a remarkable range of films, celebrates the early years of British filmmaking and spans from such pioneers as George Albert Smith and Cecil Hepworth to such later figures as Anthony Asquith, Maurice Elvey and, of course, Alfred Hitchcock.
In 1984, Academy Award winning composer Giorgio Moroder introduced Fritz Lang’s science fiction epic Metropolis to a new generation of filmgoers. Working in collaboration with film archivists globally, Moroder supervised a special reconstruction, with color tinting, fewer intertitles and newly restored footage. A pioneer in the field of digital music, Moroder backed this special edition with a throbbing new score, punctuated with pop songs from some of the biggest stars of the early MTV era: Freddie Mercury, Pat Benatar, Adam Ant, Bonnie Tyler, Loverboy and others.
The epic and poetic tale of the early years of Italian cinema, from 1896 to 1930: how peplum was born, how the first stars shone, how many daring filmmakers were able to create an original style amalgamating literature, theater, painting and opera; a tale of splendor and decadence.
The story of Fantômas, the first villain of modernity, from his birth in 1911 as a novel character to his contemporary vicissitudes, passing through Louis Feuillade, André Hunebelle, surrealism and Moscow.
Two-reel comedy, directed by William S. Campbell staring noted orangutan actor, Joe Martin
A spiral of dreams and ages unravel as two celestial characters awaken and transmutate into a mythological being.
A boy falls for a princess, his cat for hers. But her father does not like the idea of a commoner marrying a noblewoman and kicks him out. After seeing a Rudolpho Valensino movie at the local theater his cat has the idea that he could try impressing the king as bullfighter, to win his daughters hand. Bullfighting is relatively easy, when you can hypnotize the bull, but why does his cat need new boots ?
Pompeyo and Rodolfo work in a newspaper, but they dream of becoming film actors, so they go to a casting for an American film that will be shot in Madrid for a few days; but things will not turn out as they expect…
A biographical film about cinematic illusionist Georges Méliès featuring Méliès’s widow, Jeanne d’Alcy, as herself, and their son André as his own father.
The first meeting of a U.S. president and a Mexican president took place when William Howard Taft met Porfirio Díaz on 16 October 1909, in El Paso. The meeting was celebrated in both El Paso and Juárez with parades, elaborate receptions, lavish gifts and large crowds. Shot by the pioneers of Mexican Cinema the brothers Alva. This is a typical example of newsreel material prior to the Mexican revolution. By hemerographical references we know that this footage was presented to the then president of Mexico General Porfirio Díaz in the Castle of Chapultepec, then residence of the president.
A father sacrifices an animal on the day of Eid al-Adha according to the traditions and customs of the past. According to the old custom, he gives the last bowl of water to the goat, but his son tries to save the goat. The father angrily looks for them. The boy makes the goat run away and puts the rope around his neck instead of the goat. This short film refers to the story of Ismail and Ibrahim in Islam.
Three overlapping stories showcase the power of love after the death of a child, a father, and a lover for those who remain.
A hapless stage musician struggles to keep the attention of her meagre audience. When her tricks start to backfire with increasingly dire results, she turns to ever more spectacular methods.
For the Honour of Australia is a 1916 film composed of footage from two 1915 Australian silent films, For Australia and How We Beat the Emden, plus the documentary How We Fought the Emden.
Time is not linear, it is an infinite circle that surrounds us. -Andrei Tarkovsky
