Even the most beautiful tram ride eventually comes to a halt. Even the transcontinental railroad has a beginning and an end. It is also true that after eight days of divas, detours, detectives and decadence, the Giornate del Cinema Muto closes its doors for another year. I had a wonderful festival with great films and better friends. I am overwhelmed by the strength and creativity of this silent film community. As Catherine Cormon said when she accepted her Jean Mitry award, the goal is for this festival to keep going and going, so we continue to deepen our relationship with our silent film heritage. Film won’t save itself.
Continue reading Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026: Pordenone Post No 8Category Archives: Screening
Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026: Pordenone Post No 7
Let’s begin in the logical place, at the very end of the day. Tonight was a gala night in Pordenone, a celebration of some of my favourite women. For sure we had Pola Negri and Gloria Swanson on the big screen, but if you want a really iconic duo, check out our Jean Mitry prize-winners, Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi and Catherine Cormon from Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. I don’t pretend to know everyone in the film archiving world but I know enough to know that these two were very worthy winners. And Elif’s speech in which she talked about expanding the canon, refusing to accept that films were lost, and “acts of resistance against the establishment” made my heart sing.
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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026: Pordenone Post No 6
I have spent a lot of words on Le Giornate del Cinema Muto so maybe I need some new ones. Conveniently enough, day six of the festival proved a fruitful day for neologisms – right from the start.
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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026: Pordenone Post No 5
Even here at Pordenone, not every film you watch can be a masterpiece. So rest assured that tonight’s gala screening of A Page of Madness (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926), with live benshi narration from Kataoka Ichirō, more than fulfilled the festival’s chef d’oeuvre quotient for the day. It screened in the evening, with more shorts, all accompanied by benshi narrators and live music from Matsumura Makia, Katada Kisayo and Kiyomoto Nobuakira. Five stars all round. And there is another benshi programme tomorrow morning, featuring another canonical Japanese silent, one I may perhaps even prefer, so we are truly blessed.
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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026: Pordenone Post No 4
“There is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” So the Bible says, but there was much rejoicing in heaven, or rather the second balcony of the Teatro Verdi, today over Seven Sinners (Lewis Milestone, 1925). And we don’t repent a second of it.
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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026: Pordenone Post No 3
Pordenone is basically a very long tram ride, and although the views at every stop are very diverting, I have no intention of disembarking any time soon.
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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026: Pordenone Post No 2
If you are anything like me, then you may well consider the two-hour flight to Italy for the Pordenone Silent Film Festival at least partially justified by the chance to see four minutes of a lost FW Murnau film. Right or wrong, it’s how we’re made. And yes today I did get to see two separate fragments of Murnau’s Satanas (1920). Well, they say the devil has all the best films.
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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026: Pordenone Post No 1
The long hot summer of 2026 continues here at Pordenone. The first day of festivities for the 45th Pordenone Silent Film Festival dawned with a blaze of sunshine, a bustling market and an abundance of good vibes in northern Italy. And we closed with the glow of the Spanish sun. Now, to my mind, it is never truly autumn until Le Giornate del Cinema Muto has shut up shop for the year, but bonfire night edged a little closer with the new fizzing and sparkling festival logo that greeted us at the gala tonight.
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So this is Bologna: Il Cinema Ritrovato XL 2026
What is Il Cinema Ritrovato? A few years back at a Bologna dinner, an important person with far more right to speak on these matters than I have, announced that for them, Il Cinéma Ritrovato was not a festival, but a museum. They spoke eloquently, and sincerely, but honestly I think that is a nonsense. Il Cinema Ritrovato, which has just closed its largest ever, “XL” edition, at the age of 40, is a festival in every sense of the word.
Il Cinema Ritrovato is a celebration, it’s true – so it is a festival according to that fluffy definition. Sitting with the crowds watching classics in Piazza Maggiore or encountering rarely seen gems in the Cinemalibero strand will convince you of that – of the love for cinema that animates all the action. Ritrovato is place of joy, of friendships and new connections. A pleasure to attend, even in a heatwave.
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Cinema Rediscovered: Queen Kelly in Bristol this July
Royals like to take international tours, don’t they? Now Queen Kelly has played Venice, Lyon, Sao Paulo and many, many cities in the US, the royal entourage is finally en route to the UK. Where better for the British premiere of Milestone’s stunning new restoration of Erich von Stroheim famously unfinished, notoriously excessive, beautiful and sleazy melodrama to play than the UK’s best archive film festival, Cinema Rediscovered in Bristol?
And what is better than one screening of Queen Kelly? Two screenings of Queen Kelly.
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Experience the last days of Pompeii
A short note from friend of Silent London, Maria Wyke, professor of Latin at University College London.
A one-off screening of the rarely seen silent epic film Jone o Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei (Jone or The Last Days of Pompeii, 1913, dir. Giovanni Enrico Vidali) will be held in the 500-seat Bloomsbury Theatre from 6 to 8.30 pm on Saturday 9 May 2026. Immerse yourself in the romance and menace of Pompeii’s last days, ending with the terror of its citizens as the volcano Vesuvius erupts and destroys their city in spectacular fashion. The screening will be accompanied by live piano and percussion performed by the professional silent film musicians John Sweeney and Jeff Davenport.
Tickets cost £12 and you can book HERE. This event is part of the activities of the Greek & Latin research project Museum of Dreamworlds as well as the bicentennial celebrations of UCL.
Hippfest’s Sweet 16: Check out the lineup
Great news from the north, as Hippfest today launches the lineup for its 16th festival, taking place next month: five days of silent film, live music, workshops, talks and a chance to do the Charleston. All in the vintage splendour of the beautiful Bo’ness Hippodrome.
You can read and explore the full lineup here, but here are a few of my highlights. Hope to see you there!
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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 8
I awoke with good intentions but encountered even better conversations. And thus, my film viewing on this, the final day of the 44th Giornate del Cinema Muto, began at midday, with Koko the Clown. Which is a wonderful way to begin. This cartoon, Ko-Ko at the Circus (Dave Fleischer, 1926), with our inky friend squaring off against a giant, had me in stitches – which is how I ended the day too. Apt, perhaps to start with animation when today was really all about the kiddywinks.
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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 7
I have been a little slow to start up some mornings. But one thing you can guarantee that I will get out of bed for is Victor Sjöström. Victor Sjöström’s 1912 debut film no less, banned outright in Sweden, but available for us lucky degenerates on the capacious Verdi screen, with a truly wonderful accompaniment by Stephen Horne. Variously known as The Cruelty of the World, The Gardener or The Broken Spring Rose, this is a really special film and I do think the first title is the best one.
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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 6
Feature films? What a concept. They don’t always seem to be the dominant form here at Pordenone. But this afternoon was an exception to that rule, with a triple-bill of four-to-six-reelers back to back. Welcome to a world of truly immersive narrative entertainment, It’s the future.
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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 5
It may seem that the Giornate is in its own bubble, a hundred years or more removed from the real world, wrapped up in the fashions and the fads of the past. But we’re still looking out at the world every day, and no matter how the text on screen tries to guide us, we bring our 21st-century interpretation to everything that passes in front of our eyes. Sometimes the challenge is to wind back the clock, to see the past as our ancestors did when they were living through it. Sometimes we have no choice but to view images of the world as it was while burdened with the knowledge of our shared history, and of our violent present.
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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 4
Last night I dreamt I went to East Lynne again… Ellen Wood is directing my subconscious now. I love this mini melodrama strand and I really enjoyed today’s instalment, which was the lavish 1925 Fox adaptation, East Lynne (Emmett Flynn), scripted by Lenore Coffee and starring Edmund Lowe as Carlyle and Alma Rubens as Lady Isabel – a very handsome pair and just right for this ill-starred pair.
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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 3
Monday finished with a zinger. I mean a Zingari. Italia Almirante Manzini wowed the Verdi as Wilejka, a heavy-lidded beauty with great hair, but in this case as a heavy-lidded beautiful Gypsy shepherdess with great hair. In Zingari (Mario Almirante, 1920) Wilejka falls in love with a man, Abaldo (Amleto Novelli, no less) that her father, the leader of the camp, forbids her to marry. There is many a consultation of the cards, a fireside dance, a storm, a threatening villain, a crushing pang of jealousy, an assassination and naturally, a barn on fire before this will all end happily ever after.
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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 2
Is it still a pathetic fallacy even if the weather is true but the drama is not? As I set out to begin my day with some major melodrama, there was heavy weather in the skies above Pordenone also. We shook off the rain in the Verdi foyer, while we prepared to dampen our faces with tears during the first of this year’s adaptations of East Lynne.
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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 1
The Giornate dawned with grey skies but good times, a respite from Storm Amy and all the rest of the week’s turbulence, a day of pretty views and outbreaks of mild escapism. Many of us were just grateful to be get here, let alone arrive on time, after the transport situation was especially complex this year. It was an especially mellow start to the festival for me. Blame it on the 3am alarm call, the cold medication or just the pleasurable daze of seeing so many familiar faces all at once. Will I sneeze or snooze my way through the first day of films? Who knows? And will my ears ever “unpop” from the plane? Join me now to find out.
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