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.
Continue reading Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 8Tag Archives: Max Fleischer
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.
Continue reading Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 3
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.
Continue reading Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 2
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.
Continue reading Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 1A Trip to the Moon and silent animated shorts at the Barbican, 26 June 2011
The Barbican is devoting the summer to animation, with a multifaceted season called Watch Me Move. There’s an exhibition in the art gallery and screenings in the cinema of everything from anime to Jan Svankmajer. And there’s this, a presentation of early animated films, accompanied by the musicians of the Guildhall Electronic Music Studios.
Top billing goes to the earliest film here: Georges Méliès’s science-fiction spectacular A Trip to the Moon (1902): possibly the most influential 14 minutes of film ever recorded. It’s fair to say that your year of Méliès mania starts here. 2011 marks the 150th anniversary of the director’s birth and there are two big releases in the pipeline to celebrate. First, the painstaking full-colour restoration of A Trip to the Moon, which premiered at Cannes and should be coming to these shores soon. Second, Martin Scorsese’s 3D movie Hugo Cabret, based on a children’s book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which features Méliès and his beautiful trick films. This snippet from Le Figaro suggests that we might just see both films together when the latter gets its theatrical release.
Back at the Barbican, and the other films on the bill include four of Winsor McCay’s whimsical hand-drawn animated films:
Silent London 