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Silent Film Maker: an iPhone app
There’s something a little perverse in blogging and tweeting about silent film, using modern technology to write about something that started 116 years ago. After all, these days I can shoot minutes...
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Charlie Chaplin Google doodle video
The Charlie Chaplin Google doodle is more ambitious than most. It links to this cute Chaplin-esque video. It hasn’t appeared here in the UK quite yet, but look out for it tomorrow, 16 April, which is...
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The Artist (2011): the UK trailer
After a triumphant run at international film festivals, modern silent movie The Artist is finally coming to the UK – and here is the toe-tapping trailer. The film is set in Hollywood at the end of the...
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Video: Air talk about scoring A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès
Culturethèque met French duo Air during their trip to the Institut Français on 12 December 2011 for an exclusive screening of Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon (1902), in its restored colour version....
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Silent Birmingham – Street Act
A few weeks ago, I posted about a competition held by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. The task set was to create a short animation, featuring a city landmark, to be accompanied by one of...
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The Queen’s diamond jubilee – in 1897
The union flag bunting has been hung, the coronation chicken sandwiches have been cut and the roads have mostly been closed. Like it or not, it will be hard to escape the Queen’s diamond jubilee...
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Blancanieves (2012): teaser trailer
I wrote about this silent Spanish adaptation of Snow White a few weeks ago, but now we have some footage to whet our appetites. Blancanieves is a new film by Pablo Berger (Torremolinos 73) and it’s a...
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Silent film pianist Costas Fotopoulos – video interview
Costas Fotopoulos is based in London and works internationally as a concert and silent film pianist, and as a composer and arranger for film, the stage and the concert hall. He regularly provides live...
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Crosswords: a modern silent set in London
Film-maker Steve Simmons sent me this short film, his second piece of work, and how could I resist sharing it with you? It was shot in south London, in Lambeth in fact, and any hard-working...
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A Boy and His Atom: the world’s smallest silent movie
Full disclosure: this is basically an advert for IBM. But it tickled me, because this mind-boggling short reminds us that “primitive” film-making is often the most ingenious. This is stop-motion...
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Mark Kermode on silent cinema
Mark Kermode’s passion for the silent film and live music scene, expressed here in a video interview with the utterly brilliant New Empress team, is always heartening. I wish he would talk about a...
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Shaun the Sheep the Movie: teaser trailer – video
Will this be something we consider to be a truly silent film? Who knows. But it’s dialogue-free, delightful and comes to us courtesy of our friends at Aardman Animations, whose support for the...
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Wonderful London 1924 & 2014
Film-maker Simon Smith has made another silent cinema mashup to delight any Londoner. His previous film spliced scenes from Friese-Greene’s The Open Road (1927) with the same London streets filmed in...
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Toronto Silent Film Festival 2014: talking about intertitles
It was great honour for me to be asked to speak on the opening night of the Toronto silent film festival recently. It’s just a pity that geography was against us. But the speech was recorded ahead of...
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England v Ireland (1905): watch the earliest footage of the national side
Ready for the game tonight? Warm up with this treat from the BFI archives. England play Ireland at Manchester City’s Hyde Road ground on 14 October 1905. The film is only three minutes long, but don’t...
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London’s Hollywood: a visual tour of Gainsborough Studio in the 1920s – video
It’s remarkable what you can pick up in three minutes and 45 seconds. This short video by Gary Chapman, author of London’s Hollywood: the Gainsborough Studio in the Silent Years, is an excellent...
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Unsilent Movies: touring the UK with The Phantom of the Opera
Unsilent Movies has been touring silent film and live music events for a couple of years now. This month, they are bringing their score for The Phantom of the Opera (1925) to venues across the UK....
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Silent Christmas: Cage Against the Machine
It’s a fairly safe bet that the discerning readers of this blog won’t be buying Matt Cardle’s single this Christmas.* But what should we be slipping into the fleecy stockings of our loved ones instead?...
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Happy New Year!
It’s New Year’s Eve, so it’s time to get your dancing shoes on. Here’s a little cinematic inspiration for those of you anticipating a “foxtrot epidemic” tonight, courtesy of Ernst Lubitsch’s The Oyster...
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The Phoenix: A Century of Cinema
I thought you might enjoy this elegant documentary about the history of The Phoenix cinema in East Finchley. It’s a charming film, tracing the cinema from its earliest days in the 1910s and through its...
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