1921-1930

A series of newsreel films from Dziga Vertov, Elizaveta Svilova, and Mikhail Kaufman which document Russian Life in the early 1920s.Read More »

Dziga Vertov records the achievements, and some failures, of the Moscow soviet.Read More »

PLOT: Mathilde Strangerson, the daughter of an eminent scientist, narrowly escapes being murdered in her own bedroom by an unknown assailant. As the room was locked from the inside, no one can understand how the attacker managed to enter or leave the room. Reporter and amateur sleuth Joseph Rouletabille arrives on the scene to protect Mathilde and resolve the mystery of the yellow room.Read More »

Originally titled New Orleans Frolic, the story centers around Margie (played by Marjorie White), a singer on a showboat who goes to make her fortune in New York City, despite being in love with the boat owner’s grandson. Although successful in the city, when she hears that the showboat is in financial trouble she calls all the boat’s former stars to perform in a show to rescue it.Read More »

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One of the earliest surviving silent comedies by master filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, A Straightforward Boy is a rambunctious, adorable kidnapping caper now screening in a new restoration that restores to it eight long-lost and recently rediscovered minutes. The short features one of the all-time great child actors, Tomio Aoki, at age six and in his first starring role as the titular boy all too happy to be abducted – so long as his petty-crook captors (Tatsuo Saitô and Takeshi Sakamoto) are willing to endure his company. Aoki’s extraordinary career would go on to include over 300 films, from Ozu’s 1932 I Was Born, But… to Seijun Suzuki’s 2001 Pistol Opera.Read More »

A stirring tale of romance and deception staged on an epic scale by director Frank Lloyd, The Sea Hawk (1924) captures the majesty and vigor of silent cinema at its most spectacular. Based on the novel by Rafael Sabatini, the author of Scaramouche and Captain Blood, the film is a swashbuckling epic of the highest order, spanning several years and continents as it tells the story of Oliver Tressilian, a British nobleman falsely accused of murder, and dramatizes his valiant efforts to restore honor to his name.Read More »

The story of a frozen girl who tries to sell matches during Christmas and dreams about a toy store. The film is based on the 1845 short story of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen.Read More »

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A 20-minute documentary of Jewish settlement in the Yevpatoria district of the Crimea. Exhibiting a certain amount of Jewish irony, Jews on the Land opens with scenes of a war-devastated shtetl (all that is left of the central market is a single pathetic fish stall), than shows an elderly Jew wandering about an even more desolate wilderness. Soon, however, sod-brick settlements rise and, as irrigation ditch criss-cross the once –barren plain, the now- productivised Jews are equally transformed: a new-born baby is named Forget-You-Sorrow. Tractor drivers and Young Pioneers’ are given particular pride of place and the film-makers emphasise that, among other livestock, these new Jewish peasants are raising pigs.
“Inside the film factory” by Richard Taylor, Ian ChristieRead More »

An actress becomes the king’s mistress and persuades him to convert the palace to a servicemen’s home.Read More »