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Silent Cinema Showcase returns! It’s your chance
to get acquainted with the unique art of silent
cinema, as well as the dedicated and talented
modern musicians who bring these films to life with
their inventive accompaniment. This year’s exciting
program features musical choices ranging from solo
guitar to 40-person orchestra.
No passes accepted.
October 24—November 23
Silent Cinema Showcase
Psychedelic Cinema: Light Show Films by
Ken Brown, 1967–1969
Live musical accompaniment by The Psychedelic
Cinema Orchestra
Fri, Oct 24, 7:30
Between 1967 and 1969, Ken Brown created short Super 8
films to be projected with the light show at the premiere rock
club in Boston, Massachusetts. The resulting films, collected as
the “Psychedelic Cinema” program, stand today as an amazing
window on another time. Swirling colors and lights, clip art
animations, cinéma verité images of ‘60s youth culture and
fashions, flickering candle flames and flowers in bloom meld
together in fluid montage. The films illuminated the stage for Jimi
Hendrix, The Velvet Underground, The Grateful Dead, Frank
Zappa, Sly and the Family Stone, Neil Young, The Who, Pink
Floyd and more.
Total program approx. 60 min.
THE LODGER: A STORY OF THE LONDON FOG
Live musical accompaniment by Not So Silent Cinema
Sat, Nov 1, 3:00
A killer stalks a London neighborhood, murdering fair-haired
lovelies every Tuesday night for the past several months and
leaving behind a mysterious calling card signed "The Avenger."
Could it be Ivor Novello, the spooky new tenant at the local
rooming house? Hitchcock's first thriller, while not the first movie
he directed, was the first one he considered to bear his artistic
signature. (It's also the first in which Hitchcock appears in a
cameo, which would became a standard practice.)
DIR/SCR Alfred
Hitchcock; SCR Eliot Stannard, based on the novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes; PROD Michael Balcon,
Carlyle Blackwell. UK, 1927, b&w, 68 min. NOT RATED
VAMPYR
Live musical accompaniment by Gary Lucas
Tickets $15/$12 AFI Members
Sat, Nov 1, 5:00
Danish master Carl Theodor Dreyer’s singular horror film traces
a young man’s dawning realization that the mysterious doings
in the village of Courtempierre in fact have a supernatural
explanation — a withered old crone of a vampire is preying
upon the local populace. Inspired by Sheridan Le Fanu’s
“Carmilla.”
DIR/SCR/PROD Carl Theodor Dreyer; SCR Christen Jul, from “Carmilla” by
Sheridan Le Fanu; PROD Julian West. Germany/France, 1932, b&w, 75 min. German intertitles
with English subtitles. NOT RATED
NOSFERATU (1922)
[Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens]
Live musical accompaniment by Not So Silent Cinema
Tickets $20/$18 AFI Members
Sat, Nov 1, 7:30
Casting a long and terrifying shadow over the genre, German
silent film master F. W. Murnau's uncredited appropriation of
Bram Stoker's "Dracula" set the standard for all vampire flicks
to come. Max Schreck's monstrous Count Orlok is singularly
frightening, repulsive and beastly, where Bela Lugosi was
courtly and Christopher Lee seductive.
DIR F. W. Murnau; SCR Henrik Galeen,
from the novel "Dracula" by Bram Stoker; PROD Enrico Dieckmann, Albin Grau. Germany, 1922,
b&w/hand-tinted color, 85 min. NOT RATED
DRACULA (1931) (Spanish language version)
Live musical accompaniment by Gary Lucas
Tickets $15/$12 AFI Members
Sat, Nov 1, 9:30
Horror aficionados have long sung the praises of Universal’s
1931 Spanish language version of DRACULA, shot
simultaneously and on the same sets as Tod Browning’s
celebrated English-language original starring Bela Lugosi.
Directed by George Melford and starring Carlos Villarías as the
vampire “Conde Drácula,” this version boasts a better-sustained
atmosphere of eeriness throughout, stronger continuity (perhaps
due to it running a half hour longer than the Browning version)
and much more erotic charge between Drácula and his comely
victims, notably Lupita Tovar as Eva (Mina in the original)
Seward.
DIR George Melford; SCR Baltasar Fernández Cué, from the novel by Bram Stoker
and the play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston; PROD Carl Laemmle, Jr. US, 1931, b&w,
104 min. In Spanish and Hungarian with English subtitles. NOT RATED
INTOLERANCE:
LOVE’S STRUGGLE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
Live musical accompaniment by Boister
Sun, Nov 2, 2:00
Strange, sentimental and
stirring, D. W. Griffith’s
epic extravaganza
tells four stories
across four millennia,
each illustrating the
destructiveness of
mankind’s hatred and
intolerance. Griffith’s
three-hours-plus opus
cross-cuts the action
from ancient Babylon to
20th-century California,
from Jesus on the cross
to Catherine de Medici
persecuting Huguenots
in 15th-century France.
Among the cast of
thousands are Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Bessie Love, Miriam
Cooper, Constance Talmadge and Eugene Pallette, not to
mention bit players like Erich von Stroheim, King Vidor, Wallace
Reid, Douglas Fairbanks, Tod Browning, Frank Borzage and
W. S. Van Dyke.
DIR/SCR/PROD D. W. Griffith. US, 1916, b&w, 167 min. NOT RATED
STEAMBOAT BILL, JR.
Live musical accompaniment by Dan Zanes
Tickets $15/$12 AFI Members/$7 Children under 12
Fri, Nov 7, 7:30; Sat, Nov 8, 5:30
Buster Keaton is the sensitive
son of a tough-talking
steamboat captain who
has waged a personal war
against the wealthy owner of
a ferryboat. When Keaton
falls for the ferryboat owner's
pretty daughter, both try to
end their quarreling, but
things seem irreparable when
Keaton's dad punches the
lady's father in the mouth.
More classic sight gags
abound — including a three-
story house that practically
crushes Keaton, who is saved
only because the house's
window was left open!
DIR Charles Reisner; SCR Carl Harbaugh. US,
1928, b&w, 71 min. NOT RATED
THE MARK OF ZORRO (1920)
Live musical accompaniment by Hesperus
Tickets $15/$12 AFI Members/$7 Children under 12
Sat, Nov 8, 7:45
Douglas Fairbanks’ first departure from the contemporary
comedies with which he had risen to stardom into period
adventure cemented his legacy as the screen’s most iconic
swashbuckler. In the Old California of New Spain, a masked
swordsman combats the tyranny of Capitán Juan Ramon. Could
this devil-may-care adventurer in fact be the foppish dandy Don
Diego de la Vega, the playboy son of a wealthy ranchero?
DIR Fred Niblo; SCR Eugene Miller; SCR/PROD Douglas Fairbanks, from “The Curse of Capistrano”
by Johnston McCulley. US, 1920, b&w, 107 min. NOT RATED
Courtesy of Cohen Media Group
Courtesy of Universal
Courtesy of Ken Brown
NOSFERATU
DRACULA
Psychedelic Cinema
