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[silentlondon]

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2019: Pordenone Post No 7.5

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2019: Pordenone Post No 7.5

Greetings, not from Pordenone, but from Marco Polo airport. Sadly I am not staying for the final day of the Giornate, so this may not be the blogging finale you were expecting.

There is a fine day ahead for those of you still at the festival, including Colleen Moore in Ella Cinders and Reginald Denny in Skinner’s Dress Suit, not to mention the conclusion of the Charles Hutchison serial The Great…

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[silentlondon]

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2019: Pordenone Post No 7

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2019: Pordenone Post No 7

“You must go to the KiPho!” That was the message of the morning, where KiPho means cinema: kino + photografie. It takes a certain frame of mind to rise early in the morning to learn “how to be modern” from films that are nearly a century old, but here in Pordenone it seems perfectly natural. So today’s Weimar shorts selection began with Kipho, AKA Filmfrom 1925, a speedy run-through of the medium…

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[silentlondon]

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2019: Pordenone Post No 6

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2019: Pordenone Post No 6

Norma Desmond reckoned the silents didn’t need dialogue. But she never came to the Giornate. This may be a silent film festival but it’s good to talk. And listen. So I spent about as much time listening to people chat today as I did watching them mouth words. And yes, today did mark the return of benshi artist Ichiko Kataora to Pordenone with the Japanese silent Chushingura(1910-1917). So there…

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[silentlondon]

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2019: Pordenone Post No 5

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2019: Pordenone Post No 5

You can’t watch everything. Well maybe you can. I can’t. So it is with regret that I have to make some difficult choices – today of all days. Weimar cinema or William S Hart westerns, for example. I followed my heart, and my research interests. What else can you do?

So I spent my morning immersed in 1920s Germany (and my 2019 inbox). To begin with, a diverting selection from the Weimar Shorts…

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[silentlondon]

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2019: Pordenone Post No 4

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2019: Pordenone Post No 4

Still mooning about the goat-herder? Another Giornate blogpost will take your mind off it, Marion.

One of the beauties of Pordenone is the fact that the programme is so omnivorous, ranging far and wide over the first four decades of film history, and the audience are equally diverse. No doubt the main attraction of today, the headline act as it were, was the Hollywood comedy double-bill that…

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[silentlondon]

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2019: Pordenone Post No 2

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2019: Pordenone Post No 2

It was a day for film stars in Pordenone today: from the contract players lining up to do studio promo in this morning’s Films on Film programme to Ita Rina the Slovenian tragedienne in the Estonian drama Kire Lained at the end of the night. But when I consider all the stars shining brightly in the Verdi today, I have to confess, my heart belongs to William S.

Tonight’s evening screening was…

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[silentlondon]

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2019: Pordenone Post No 1

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2019: Pordenone Post No 1

Charlie Chaplin, whose early masterpiece The Kidplayed this year’s Giornate opening-night gala, said some very wise things. Among which was the famous dictum that “a day without laughter is a day wasted”. It’s especially glorious to reflect on that idea after a day spent in fits of giggles in the Verdi. Today belonged to Chaplin, to Max Linder, to Suzanne Grandais and Léonce Perret. And more than…

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