Category: Silent Films
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You Can Help Bring 2 Tom Tyler Silent Westerns Back to Fans
Not all of my home video projects are initiated by me. I’ve co-produced and released Blu-rays and DVDs for projects who were the brainchild of fellow film accompanists Jon C. Mirsalis and Andrew Earle Simpson, historian-educator-author Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, and my friends at the Library of Congress. I’m pleased to let you know that there’s another…
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Ben Model: Film Preservationist?
I am flattered when I read comments in social media or in people’s blog posts mentioning me as a film preservationist. It’s an honorable and lofty title, and there’s something beyond modesty that makes me think “Aww, no, no…you’re too kind”. Because, after all, what I’m doing is producing and releasing films for the home…
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A Stetson Hat Boomerangs Back
I hadn’t any more use for my 16mm print of Making a Stetson, so I sold it on eBay. I’d won it there in the first place. It seemed to be a lost film, but then a 35mm print turned up in New Zealand and I wanted to know when my print had been made,…
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The Spirit of ’76 Circa 1905
I usually avoid recognizable music if I can help it, as it’s a distraction to the viewer unless there’s someone playing a record or piece of sheet music shown in a close-up. With this particular 1905 film, I needed to make an exception. Here’s a film (below) from the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company called…
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Speedy Has Quite The Hold On An Audience
A number of personal, “tone-poem” slice-of-life films were made at the tail end of the silent era. The ones often mentioned are titles like Sunrise (1927), The Crowd (1928) and Lonesome (1928). Even von Stroheim’s The Wedding March (1928) has a very thin plot, and is almost a meditation on the courtship of his and…