PORDENONE SILENT 2017

You’ll notice this edition’s poster is a world away from the exuberance of Douglas Fairbanks last year. The image, shot by the great Ruth Harriet Louise, shows Lars Hanson in shadowy profile staring out against a silvered sea surmounted by unsettled clouds shot through with sunlight. It is contemplative, perhaps even slightly disquieting, and captures the zeitgeist of today even more than in 1927, when it was shot. For a variety of reasons, at the last minute we were unable to secure the film itself, Captain Salvation, although we plan on screening it next year. While it may seem odd to have a poster without the film attached, we still have Lars Hanson in the Scandinavian section (Synnöve Solbakken), and the image’s beauty stands alone.
I don’t mean to imply that this year’s mood is marked by melancholy, though the “Effects of War” program is a sobering reminder of how little we’ve learned from the past. If anything, the Giornate’s 36th edition is notable for a high-spirited selection of comedies ranging from the raucous ladies of “Nasty Women” to the wit of The Reckless Age (Rediscoveries & Restorations [R&R]) and the tongue-in-cheek humor of Seven Footprints to Satan (Cineteca Italiana 70). The section name “Nasty Women” should be familiar to everyone who paid attention to the women’s marches last January following Donald Trump’s inauguration, which brought an estimated 2 million people from over 60 countries onto the streets protesting the boastful misogyny of the U.S. President. Ever since Trump branded Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman,” the term has been reclaimed as a badge of honor, denoting a woman unafraid to fight for gender parity and the right to make their own decisions about their bodies. In tribute to this demand for equality, we’re presenting a five-section program of unabashed women who delight in mischief. Whether dastardly young demon Léontine in a series of shorts, straight-shooting cowgirl Texas Guinan in The Night Rider, or savvy businesswoman Blanche Sweet in The Deadlier Sex, these dames are nobody’s plaything, and when they want something, they’ll make no dainty apologies to get it.
Scandinavia is a focus, not for the first time at the Giornate, but this year we’re looking at directors of the Golden Age influenced by the atmospheric psychological masterpieces of Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller rather than the usual canonical works. Sjöström is represented directly, with the rarely seen Renaissance-set drama Vem dömer?, and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s life-affirming Glomdalsbruden is also in the group. Yet how many people are familiar with John W. Brunius’s terrific Thora van Deken, or A.W. Sandberg’s moody Morænen?
There’s a strong thread of exoticism running through all sections, thanks in part to “Soviet Travelogues” and “Silent Africa in Norway.” The former takes us to the far-flung corners of the burgeoning Soviet Empire and beyond, from the high peaks of Central Asia in Pamir. Krisha Mira to the panoramic beauty of the Crimea in Kara-Dag. The Caucasus is also seen through Italian eyes in the rare, newly reconstructed Viaggio in Caucaso e Persia from 1910 (R&R). Shifting further south, “Silent Africa in Norway” is composed of fascinating, largely ethnographic films made by European cameramen in East Africa, and I’m especially pleased that Norwegian curator and archivist Tina Anckarman had the assistance of British anthropologist Dr. Neil Carrier in identifying tribes and locations, as this sort of interdisciplinary collaboration is too often neglected. In the spirit of early cinema’s ability to encompass the widest range of territories, fetishizing distance while bringing the world closer than ever, we also have several polar films, from the stunningly tinted and toned Captain F.E. Kleinschmidt’s Arctic Hunt (R&R) to the exciting Svalbard adventure documentary Podvig vo L’dakh (Soviet Travelogues).
I had some sly fun with Russia this year, and not just via travel films. In order to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the “ten days that shook the world,” we’ve brought together two American anti-Bolshevik dramas from 1919, The Right to Happiness, about identical twins, one a daughter of Capitalism, the other a Bolshevik rabble-rouser, and The World and Its Woman (not to be confused with The World and the Woman starring Jeanne Eagels, also in the festival this year just to befuddle everyone). Opera diva Geraldine Farrar is but one of many attractions in The World and Its Woman, a big-budget Goldwyn production with a knock-down climax featuring Farrar and Rose Dione in a fight that drew comparisons with 1914’s The Spoilers. Hooray for nasty women!
The strong-woman presence of Pola Negri is highlighted in three films from 1918, which also provides a showcase for original compositions: Carmen features a score by Gabriel Thibaudeau for piano and cello, while Der gelbe Schein allows us to bring Klezmatics founder Alicia Svigals to Pordenone for the first time. This edition is particularly rich in music events, from Philip Carli’s newly commissioned quintet score for A Fool There Was (a canonical film in desperate need of reassessment) to Ukraine’s Anton Baibakov Collective performing for the exciting new Mikhail Kaufman discovery, Nebuvalyi Pokhid (An Unprecedented Campaign; R&R). That’s in addition of course to the opening and closing nights, both featuring the Orchestra San Marco performing Carl Davis’s symphonic scores for The Crowd and The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (neither, by the way, ever screened in Pordenone).
The Kaufman is but one of a number of noteworthy finds, epitomized by Rob Byrne’s fortuitous discovery of fragments from the lost Louise Brooks feature Now We’re in the Air, which recently had its world premiere at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Even though Brooks is only in a few minutes of the surviving footage, her matchless presence lights up the screen. In addition, Serge Bromberg’s identification of a lost Méliès, Le Rosier miraculeux, found in a unique archive in Iowa, is an enchanting addition to the master pioneer’s considerable oeuvre.
We’re bidding a farewell of sorts to two ongoing series, “Beginnings of the Western” and Luca Comerio, though neither the exploration of Western iconography – this year with an eye to European productions – nor Comerio’s heterogenous talents are topics that have by any means been exhausted. Two late Japanese silents with synchronized sound, Shima no Musume (Hotei Nomura) and Tokyo no Yado (Yasujiro Ozu), offer a taste of a larger program being prepared for next year by Tokyo’s National Film Centre, and Milan’s Cineteca italiana receives a well-deserved tribute on its 70th anniversary, with a selection of Italian and foreign titles testifying to the diversity of Italy’s oldest archive. Early cinema hasn’t been neglected, thanks to a program of Victorian shorts that heralds the BFI’s extensive Victorian conservation project, plus there’s a unique session of Tableaux Vivants being screened together with images of the paintings that inspired them.
“The Effects of War” wasn’t an easy section to curate, and some of the films aren’t easy to watch, yet given the world’s current conflicts, and the real threat of additional ones, a program focused on the consequences of the First World War seemed the right way to go. What’s not addressed is how much the Great War influenced cinema itself – perhaps that’s a program for the future. In the meantime, Russell Merritt is devoting the Jonathan Dennis Memorial Lecture to the significant influence made by collector, distributor, and scholar David Shepard on film preservation and the archive world.
Once again, we have a full program, one with unexpected connections and serendipitous discoveries, accompanied by the best musicians to be found anywhere. Plus, we have a fabulous new public face thanks to the beautifully designed new website. I can also honestly say that the Giornate team has never worked so hard. They’re the ones that deserve the greatest recognition.

Jay Weissberg

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