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To the stars and beyond: movies dream of outer space, 1898-1910
Le Voyage sur Jupiter (FR 1909, Segundo de Chomón) It was the end of the nineteenth century, a tumultuous time in Western society. Amidst the ongoing innovations in manufacturing and agriculture, there...
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Silents Please turns one! Reflections on a year of blogging
Today marks Silents, Please!’s first birthday. A year to the day after my initial post, I’ve published a total of 59 posts, featured hundreds of images, and written over 80K (!) words, enough for a...
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Better living through athletics: Li Lili in 体育皇后 | Queen of Sports (CN 1934)
The first Chinese silent film that I ever saw was 1934’s 体育皇后, or Queen of Sports. It would have been 5 or 6 years ago, at the lantern festival in my home city, where they showed a few films on an...
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Cinema Ritrovato from afar: Bertini’s Assunta Spina (IT 1915)
Are you at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna right now? The festival features the new restoration of one of my true loves, Rapsodia Satanica; the Keaton project; several other diva films; Gaumont at 120;...
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Emilio Ghione’s Za La Mort: a filmography
As an adjunct to my post on Anime Buie | Dark Souls, here is a brief filmography of Emilio Ghione’s Za La Mort series (1914-1924). The films are listed chronologically, with survival...
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Hesperia! The diva as star attraction in Emilio Ghione’s Anime Buie (IT 1916)
Today marks the 99th anniversary of the première of Anime Buie | Dark Souls, fourth in a series of films featuring the character Za La Mort, an honourable French apache (street criminal gang member)...
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A Japanese man in America: Sessue Hayakawa reclaims … His Birthright (US 1918)
Japanese-born actor Sessue Hayakawa was one of the biggest talents of his era. In a time of intense anti-Asian sentiment (and, indeed, legally enshrined discrimination against Japanese people in...
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“Gossip is a fearful thing”: Ruan Lingyu’s 新女性 | New Women (CN 1935)
I’ll be in China in less than a week! I’m going to visit my partner in Guangzhou, and we’ll also spend some time in Shanghai, where I’ve got a cousin living. So this seems like an appropriate time to...
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The film star performing the film star: Asta Nielsen in Die Filmprimadonna...
via European Film Gateway “Lower the flags in her honour; she is incomparable and without peer.” So wrote early film theorist Béla Balázs of Asta Nielsen in his 1924 book Der Sichtbare Mensch (The...
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Silent film fiction: Pearl White, Bert Williams, and Missing Reels
It’s been some time since I’ve done a book review post. Here I’ll talk about my recent fiction reads dealing with silent films or film performers: one novel about a lost film search, and two fictional...
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100 years ago: Ruth Stonehouse in The Gilded Cage (US 1915)
“The heart-rending story of a girl who weds for wealth, and finds that a palace of love is a gilded cage” is how Essanay advertized their 1915 release The Gilded Cage. This film, preserved by the...
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Cinematic poetry: “Silents” by Claire Crowther
A recurring dream about speechlessness, the visage of Renée Jeanne Falconetti in La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc, the sight of voices without sound—these elements were the genesis of a recent poetry book,...
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Shanghai modern: the cinematic fiction of Mu Shiying
Shanghai in the 1930s: a glittering city, humming to the rhythm of its jazz-filled dance halls, streets lit up by neon signs, art deco buildings springing up like mushrooms. A whirlwind of dance,...
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Cinema Ritrovato from afar: Bertini’s Assunta Spina (IT 1915)
Are you at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna right now? The festival features the new restoration of one of my true loves, Rapsodia Satanica; the Keaton project; several other diva films; Gaumont at 120;...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Emilio Ghione’s Za La Mort: a filmography
As an adjunct to my post on Anime Buie | Dark Souls, here is a brief filmography of Emilio Ghione’s Za La Mort series (1914-1924). The films are listed chronologically, with survival...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hesperia! The diva as star attraction in Emilio Ghione’s Anime Buie (IT 1916)
Today marks the 99th anniversary of the première of Anime Buie | Dark Souls, fourth in a series of films featuring the character Za La Mort, an honourable French apache (street criminal gang member)...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Japanese man in America: Sessue Hayakawa reclaims … His Birthright (US 1918)
Japanese-born actor Sessue Hayakawa was one of the biggest talents of his era. In a time of intense anti-Asian sentiment (and, indeed, legally enshrined discrimination against Japanese people in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“Gossip is a fearful thing”: Ruan Lingyu’s 新女性 | New Women (CN 1935)
I’ll be in China in less than a week! I’m going to visit my partner in Guangzhou, and we’ll also spend some time in Shanghai, where I’ve got a cousin living. So this seems like an appropriate time to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The film star performing the film star: Asta Nielsen in Die Filmprimadonna...
via European Film Gateway “Lower the flags in her honour; she is incomparable and without peer.” So wrote early film theorist Béla Balázs of Asta Nielsen in his 1924 book Der Sichtbare Mensch (The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Silent film fiction: Pearl White, Bert Williams, and Missing Reels
It’s been some time since I’ve done a book review post. Here I’ll talk about my recent fiction reads dealing with silent films or film performers: one novel about a lost film search, and two fictional...
View Article