The Echo Park Film Center tipped me off to this amazing short film by Guy Maddin. He made it in 2000 for the Toronto International Film Festival. It’s got the frenetic, montage energy of Sergei Eisenstein mixed with some of the fantastic elements of George Melies. Just beautiful and wild.
Tag Archives: silent
Interplanetary Revolution – 1924 Soviet Animation
Paul Gallagher at Dangerous Minds posted this 1924 Russian propaganda masterpiece. It’s a wild, science fiction, abstract work of art that just keeps pumping out wondrous images, one after the other. I love the ragged edges and mix of photographs, hand-drawn animation and cutouts.
The Insects’ Christmas
A 1913 stop-motion film produced by the Russian Khanzhonkov Company and directed by Vladislav Starevich. Gorgeous. Look at how expressive Father Christmas is. He begins the tale as an ornament on a tree. He climbs down and makes his way into the forest.
Life in Hollywood 1927
Part 2 has some footage of silent movies being shot.
Los Angeles in the 1920s
This is an old silent film produced by Ford that shows Los Angeles in the twenties. You’d be amazed by how much of old LA you can still find. I’m working on a new film that’s going to be in large part about LA and the way a person perceives the city and self through images that are borrowed and may in fact have very little to do with the actual firm existing place. Finding this little film is part of my digging through material about the real and the fanciful Los Angeles.
Silent Film Footage of Destroyed San Francisco in 1906
As neighborhoods in the United States begin to explode and disappear off the face of the earth due to a rapidly disintegrating infrastructure, distract yourself for moment and watch this film of how San Francisco looked just after the earthquake and fire of 1906. Incredible footage. These days stuff like this happens without even having an earthquake. You’re just sitting at home in America watching your TV and suddenly your children are on fire in their bedrooms and your entire neighborhood is an inferno.