There is no more perfect time to watch silent films than the present. Apart from the intimacy and preciousness of the art form, which is the great-grandfather of modern day blockbusters, these days the era from which a lot of those movies come can provide both a guide and inspiration to move forward.
We are in the midst of a worldwide pandemic not unlike the one faced by our forefathers in 1918. The Spanish Flu proved just as deadly as Covid-19, possibly more and its timed positioning at the end of the First World War could also prove useful in understanding how to find our energy and the hope necessary to move on these days. The above photograph, which is featured on the poster of this year’s Pordenone Silent Film Festival is haunting in its current-ness. It’s so now it’s almost scary. As festival director Jay Weissberg explained during the online press conference for the festival which took place on Monday, September 7th, “just as today, masks were mandatory then as well as socially distanced screenings.”
Kicking off the eight-day online run of this limited edition festival on October 3rd, will be a program called Voglia di viaggiare / The Urge to Travel made up of 9 shorts. We all possess the wish to travel and during the pandemic we’ve been pretty much relegated to our four walls. That’s where becoming an “armchair traveler” proved useful, as Weissberg pointed out, and as movie spectators we have all fallen victims to the imaginary worlds that films provide while we sit in the darkness of a theater, inspired by “the uncontrollable desire to go where the film takes us.”
Day two will feature The Brilliant Biograph, described in the program as “an eye-opening compilation designed to change our understanding of early cinema forever. Meticulous restoration work on Victorian-era 68mm films reveals a breathtaking clarity whose beauty we experience emotionally.” But also Guo Feng which is a “Chinese silent film [which] remains criminally unavailable, making this a rare opportunity to see a true masterwork starring two great actresses in a characterful story of sisters in love with the same man.”
Day three belongs to Sessue Hayakawa, a Japanese actor who was the first and only, for a long while, Asian superstar on a global level. In Where Lights are Low he plays a Chinese prince seeking to rescue his damsel in distress from slave traders in San Francisco.
While you can check out the entire program online here, I’ll skip forward to Friday, October 9th, when A Romance of the Redwoods, the 1917 film by Cecil B. DeMille will be screened. Or rather, should I say “streamed”. The film features the beautiful Mary Pickford in what Weissberg described as “an elegant Western”.
On Saturday, the 10th, and then repeated in the actual physical setting of the Teatro Comunale Giuseppe Verdi on Sunday, will be a program titled Laurel or Hardy, featuring the famous slapstick team before they became a team. Their genius is already apparent though the famed duo isn’t together as we know and love them.
Most of the films have been restored and digitally remastered by archives around the world which include the Cineteca del Friuli, of course, which is part of the organization of the festival, but also thanks to EYE Film Museum in Amsterdam, BFI London and the Danish Film Institute, among others.
But a word of caution, the program, which will be available for just over 9 Euros to those who get accredited to the festival, might take you on an “unimaginable voyage,” as Weissberg pointed out and will allow you to see the world through what you’ll believe feel like “magic glasses.”
Personally, I need all the magic I can get in my life right now. So yes, sign me up for this journey, one I’ll gladly take from the comfort of my armchair.
For all info, to buy a pass and to check out which musicians will accompany each live streaming of the films, check out the festival’s website.