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 8Tag Archives: Pordenone Silent Film Festival
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.
Continue reading Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026: Pordenone Post No 6
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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Silent bulletin: news for summer 2026
Bonn | Queen Kelly | Rudolph Valentino | Metropolis | Pordenone | Faust | & more…
It’s a long hot summer of silent cinema, my friends. The temperatures are stuck in the roaring twenties and so are we. Here’s a quick roundup of the silent film news you need to know – and some of it is designed to encourage you into an air-conditioned cinema. All of it will keep you cool…
- StummFilmTage in Bonn and “Bonnline”. Running 13 -25 August with open-air screenings in Bonn, and a parallel online streaming offer, this festival gets more tempting every year. The 2026 edition kicks off with nothing less than Greta Garbo in Gösta Berlings Saga (Mauritz Stiller, 1924) accompanied by Daan van den Hurk and Neil Brand. The streaming platform opens on 15 August, and offers one new film a day, each of which will be available for 48 hours.
- Queen Kelly at BFI Southbank. Come to London to see the Queen! I am thrilled to say that I will be introducing the unfinished masterpiece Queen Kelly in NFT1 on 20 September. Tickets go on sale 4 or 6 August, depending on whether you have a membership. There will be live accompaniment and I hope to be selling and signing copies of my new book, The Curse of Queen Kelly, afterwards. We had two great shows, UK premieres of the wonderful new Milestone Films restoration, in Bristol and Clevedon on the weekend, and you can look out for more screenings around the country as part of the Cinema Rediscovered tour. Manchester, Bo’ness, hopefully elsewhere…
The Silent London Poll of 2025: vote for your winners now
Happy holiday Silent Londoners! They say that if you remember 2025, then you weren’t watching enough silent movies. How much do you recall?
For myself I sure watched a lot of silent films, clocking up several festivals and individual screenings. Pordenone and Bologna, Zurich, Hippfest, Slapstick, Cinema Rediscovered, Women and the Silent Screen in Belgium, plus The Gold Rush centenary, Anna May Wong, Gosta Berlings Saga, Stella Dallas, Lillian Gish, Lois Weber, Film on Film and more at the Southbank. Did you catch Bonn, San Franciscso, the non-stop action at the Kennington Bioscope, or any of the many, many silent screenings all around the world? How about Sherlock Holmes?
Continue reading The Silent London Poll of 2025: vote for your winners now
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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The Silent London Poll of 2024: And the winners are …
Thank you for bearing wth me during a few several technical glitches related to this year’s poll. Relax, enjoy your glass of wine-flavoured carbonated beverage, and welcome to our glittering award ceremony. I have counted the votes, and I am ready to announce the winners of the Silent London Poll of 2024!
Congratulations to all the people mentioned below – as ever, these categories were bursting at the seams with excellent, worthy nominations and a great reminder of how exciting the global silent film scene is. Thank you for all your votes, and your comments, especially.
Without further ado, let me open this giant stack of golden envelopes. Here are your winners.
1. Best orchestral silent film screening of 2024
Your winner: The Winning of Barbara Worth (Henry King, 1926), with a score composed by Neil Brand, arranged by George Morton, conducted by Ben Palmer, performed live by the Orchestra da Camera di Pordneone, at Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone
I said: “t’s a big, big movie, with the youthful star trio of Ronald Colman (on $1,750 a week), Vilma Banky (on $1,000 a week) and Gary Cooper (on $50 a week!) in a desert love triangle, and a tremendously terrifying climax, as the townsfolk run for their lives when the river bursts its manmade bounds. Plus we were to enjoy the world premiere of a wondrous new score composed by Neil Brand, arranged by George Morton, conducted by Ben Palmer, and performed live tonight by the Orchestra da Camera di Pordenone. If you know the film you will know that it is celebrated for its scale, but also that this is a Frances Marion script, with a touch of melodrama (Vilma overhearing Ronald’s confession that he won’t propose to her, but not the reason why), her pet subject of adopted children, and her love of a grand theme – here the pioneers’ battle for mastery over the elements, and capitalism’s battle for mastery over the populace. You’ll also know that between the big action scenes there are several more sedate moments, discussions of policy and payroll. As, quite frankly, we have come to expect, Brand’s score was buoyant and nimble, keeping the film on its toes, teasing out the romance and flooding (yes, I went there) the auditorium with sound during those blockbuster setpieces, starting with a sandstorm in the first reel and the deluge in the last. Timed to a T, so that image and sound met in perfect harmony, and just a joy to listen to – for what it’s worth, I think it’s a winner. Geddit?”
2. Best silent film screening with a solo musician or small ensemble of 2024
Continue reading The Silent London Poll of 2024: And the winners are …
The Silent London Poll of 2024: vote for your winners now
Season’s greetings Silent Londoners. It has been a whirlwind of a year. How much do you remember?
Personally, I watched silent movies on three different continents this year, so I have some great cinema memories from 2024. Pordenone and Bologna, San Francisco, Istanbul, Locarno… and back home, Hippfest, Bristol, Sherlock Holmes at Alexandra Palace, Dorothy Arzner and more at the Southbank, non-stop action at the Kennington Bioscope. We celebrated some major anniversaries. Plus there was a lot of love for Anna May Wong, and Sessue Hayakawa.
Continue reading The Silent London Poll of 2024: vote for your winners now
