Tag Archives: Michelle Facey

Blog

Welcome back from the Bioscope Girl

1 Comment

This is a guest post for Silent London from Michelle Facey AKA The Bioscope Girl to tell you about some exciting silent cinema events scheduled for London and online now that the Giornate has come to an end.

Well, my silent film lovelies, its been a long time coming. Those who’ve been to the 40th Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone are now home or wending their ways back around the world. I’m sorry that myself and others who form the steering Kennington Bioscope team, apart from John Sweeney of course, essential to festival proceedings, felt unable to be there on this occasion, but hopefully next year we’ll all reunite around the Verdi and the Posta. At least we were able to join in online and keep abreast of all the essentials of the physical fest, via the insights, intertitles and general Giornate goss of Silent London’s much welcomed daily blogs, written by Italian moonlight. We missed being with everyone there and kindly, several of you let us know throughout the week that you missed us too.

Continue reading Welcome back from the Bioscope Girl →
Blog, Festival, Review

London Film Festival review: Around Japan With a Movie Camera

1 Comment

The eye wants to travel, and never more so than in these pandemic times. Which means that this presentation from the BFI’s blockbuster Japan season is actually more welcome on its delayed arrival.

In Around Japan With a Movie Camera, across an hour and a quarter, we are transported through space and time to Japan in the very early 20th century – the films span the period from 1901 to 1913. But you’ll want to devote a full ninety minutes to this one and click the “Watch introduction” button on the BFI Player. The films are more than ably introduced by the BFI’s own Bryony Dixon and Japanese film historian Mika Tomita, and the programme is hosted by Michelle ‘Bioscope Girl’ Facey. They also take time to introduce the band, as it were. The films are accompanied by Cyrus Gabrysch, Costas Fotopolous, Stephen Horne and Lillian Henley – their hands are sometimes visible thanks to the ingenuity of Gabrysch’s pandemic-era innovation, the “piano-cam”.

Continue reading London Film Festival review: Around Japan With a Movie Camera →
Blog

So this is comedy: 2019 Kennington Bioscope Silent Laughter Weekend

2 Comments

This is a guest post for Silent London by Michelle Facey, a member of the programming team at the Kennington Bioscope.

Feeling a post-Easter ennui? Well, you could do no better than to ready your laughing gear and get yourselves down anywhichway to the Cinema Museum for all or part of a weekend of silent comedy fun 27-28th April, curated by us, especially for you, at the Kennington Bioscope.

This last week saw the 130th anniversary of the birth of Lambeth’s most famous son, the Little Fellow himself, Charlie Chaplin, and as many of you may know, the Cinema Museum is of some significance in his origin story. The Master’s House, home of the Museum in Kennington, was at one time, part of the Lambeth Workhouse where Chaplin was sent as a child, and we will be marking his birthday anniversary with several programmes. Respected Chaplin biographer David Robinson will introduce Charlie’s stone-cold classic silent film, The Gold Rush (1925), showing with its recorded score. Filmmaker, collector and editor, Christopher Bird, brings us his original 16mm amber prints of The Immigrant (1917) and The Vagabond (1918). And (tweet tweet) that little Bird has told me his copy of the former “looks gorgeous.”

The Immigrant (1917)
The Immigrant (1917)

Continue reading So this is comedy: 2019 Kennington Bioscope Silent Laughter Weekend →

Blog, Festival

Pictures of Lili: The Golden Butterfly & the 4th Kennington Bioscope Silent Film Weekend

1 Comment

This is a guest post for Silent London by Michelle Facey, a member of the programming team at the Kennington Bioscope.

There are many treats coming up in the 4th Kennington Bioscope Silent Film Weekend 8 & 9 September 2018, held at our beloved Cinema Museum, the Jewel of Lambeth. From Canadian canine capers with wonder dog Rin Tin Tin, putting his best paw forward to start off the weekend in Where The North Begins (1923), to sparkling comedy with Constance Talmadge and Ronald Colman in Her Night Of Romance (1924), through to marvellous Mary Pickford in our Saturday night feature Sparrows (1926) by way of other films from the USA with William C deMille’s naturalistic drama Miss Lulu Bett (1921) and Herbert Brenon’s Dancing Mothers (1926).

Dancing_Mothers_lobby_card_2

Mothers’ lead actress was Alice Joyce but with Clara Bow also featuring in what was her first picture for Paramount, she was left more than a little in the younger woman’s shade. Louise Brooks (quite popular around these parts, I’m led to believe) commented that: “Everybody forgot Alice Joyce because Clara was so marvellous; she just swept the country. She became a star overnight with nobody’s help.”

Speaking of heroines, we’re very lucky to be looking forward to a programme on the most famous silent serial queen of them all with Pearl White: A Cliffhanging Life presented by Glenn Mitchell and Michael Pointon, who have done extensive research on plucky Pearl. Continue reading Pictures of Lili: The Golden Butterfly & the 4th Kennington Bioscope Silent Film Weekend →