Festival Postponed

Thank you for your continued support and understanding. We are all in this together.

Please stay tuned and we will be in touch once we pick a new date.

But we are already working with the staff of The Alamo Drafthouse to find new dates in the fall.

We’ve decided that we have to postpone the Denver Silent Film Festival. It’s both a hard choice and an obvious one. The health of every one of us comes first, and with all the expert advice to avoid crowds, we certainly do not want to endanger our audience or stage a festival which no one will be able attend. The hard part, of course, is that we’d put together a wonderful event, for a wonderful audience.

Friday, April 3

7:00 p.m. The Mark of Zorro (Fred Niblo, 1920, U.S., 107 minutes)

With Douglas Fairbanks

Accompanied by The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra

Zorro is something of an early Batman – of course, without either a Batmobile or a Gotham City – but he does have a horse and a sword, and he does fight evil and corruption among the wealthy in Spanish-controlled California. And he also wears a mask to hide his own upper-class status. More than anything, though, Zorro has Denver-born Douglas Fairbanks, agile and magnetic, and that makes him unique.

Saturday, April 4

10:00 a.m. Clash of the Wolves (Noel Mason Smith, 1925, 74 minutes)

With Rin-Tin-Tin

Accompanied by The Doll House Thieves

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In his ninth feature, French-born Rin-Tin-Tin plays a half-breed (half dog, half wolf) who leads a wolf pack that preys upon cattle after a forest fire has destroyed the wolves’ natural habitat. Then, his paw pierced by a thorn, Rinty is saved by a human being and his life is changed.

12:15 p.m. The Phantom Carriage (Victor Sjöström,1921, Sweden, 100 minutes)

With Victor Sjöström, Hilda Borgström and Tore Svennberg.

Accompanied by Hank Troy

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According to a legend acknowledged by three drunken men, the last person to die in a year must for the next year drive the carriage that collects the dead. And in this stunning, touching and profound film, that man reflects on the life that brought him to this point. Victor Sjöström directed and stars, and the film so affected Ingmar Bergman that he used Sjöström in his own film about an aging man re-considering his life, Wild Strawberries.

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4:00 p.m. Lonesome (Paul Fejos, 1928, 69 minutes

With Barbara Kent, Glenn Tryon, Fay Holderness.

Accompanied by the College of Arts & Media’s New Electronics Orchestra, with Donald Sosin, Gregory Walker, and Joanna Seaton.

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It’s Saturday at Coney Island. A girl and a boy meet; they spark, and then, by a quirk of fate they’re separated. The story may be old, but Fejos avant-gardish filmmaking is not, and the sights of New York in 1928 are fascinating.

7:00 p.m. So This Is Paris (Ernst Lubitsch, 1926, U.S., 80 minutes)

With Monte Blue and Patsy Ruth Miller

Accompanied by Ben Model

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In 1926, The New York Times film critic Mordaunt Hall wrote, “No matter how brilliant may be the picture Mr. Lubitsch produces, he succeeds invariably in inserting a transcendental stroke.” Enough said. Two couples, all cheating in Lubitsch’s magnificent view of sex and silliness. This screening is the premiere of Turner Classic Movies’ new restoration of the film – and of Ben Model’s new score.

Sunday, April 5

9:30 a.m. Student Shorts (60 minutes)

Each year, DSFF presents a program of new silent shorts made by film students of the College of Arts & Media of the University of Colorado Denver, under the guidance of Jessica McGaugh, Andrew Bateman and Jim Phelan. 60 minutes.

11:15 a.m. The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks/ Neobychainye priklyucheniya mistera Vesta v strane bolshevikov (Lev Kuleshov, 1924, USSR, 94 minutes)

With Porfiri Podobed and Boris Barnet

Accompanied by Hank Troy

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Mr. West, a YMCA director in America, decides to civilize the presumed barbarians of the New Soviet Union. But because this this is a Soviet-made film, not American, director Lev Kuleshov decides to make fun of this American visitor. Kuleshov was a major figure in the Constructivist/Futurist movements in the USSR – and in fact is the one who “discovered” the “Kuleshov effect,” a fundamental principle of montage, or editing.

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2:00 p.m. Mother/Mat (Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1926, 89 minutes, USSR)

With Vera Baranovskaya and Nikolay Batalov

Accompanied by Billy Overton

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Pavel is a guy with a lousy industrial job and – in this film from the heyday of Soviet revolutionary filmmaking – he has no political consciousness. Slowly that develops in him until finally, at a crisis, his mother also realizes the importance of revolt. The climax arrives with the first hint of spring, just as the ice breaks in the river – a sequence much influenced by D.W. Griffith and his film Way Down East.

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4:30 p.m. The Manxman (Alfred Hitchcock, 1929, Great Britain, 110 minutes)

With Anny Ondra, Carl Brisson and Malcolm Keen

Accompanied by Hank Troy

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In this late silent film from Alfred Hitchcock, two young men who are friends take separate directions – one becomes a lawyer, the other a fisherman. Yet they manage to fall in love with the same young woman.Hitchcock told Truffaut that The Manxman was “not a Hitchcock movie,” but it is in fact a fine moral drama.

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7:30 p.m. The Scarlet Letter (Victor Sjöström, 1926, U.S.115 minutes)

With Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson, and Henry B. Walthall

Accompanied by Donald Sosin (piano) and Joanna Seaton (vocals)

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In the two films Lillian Gish made with Swedish director Victor Sjöström (the other is the1928 Wind), she showed what she could not with D.W. Griffith – her great ability to play mature, thoughtful women instead of Griffith’s infantilized virgins. Here, Gish plays the famed Hester Prynne, outcast and forced to wear that scarlet A for adultery in a fine adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s romance (he did not call it a novel).

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MEDIA CONTACTS

Contact: Howie Movshovitz

DSFF Director

303-556-6507

hmovshovitz@cs.com

Alice Crogan

Public Relations – CAM

alice.crogan@ucdenver.edu

Alexandra Griesmer

Director of Marketing

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Denver

303-204-6785

alexandra.griesmer@drafthouse.com

STAY CONNECTED

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ABOUT DENVER SILENT FILM FESTIVAL

In the era of silent film, filmmakers first invented a new art form and then created a startling range of beloved masterpieces. Those films form the basis of cinema in the present, as well as being great art and entertainment on their own. Understanding and appreciating silent film is crucial to knowing our own society and culture. The Denver Silent Film Festival is dedicated to celebrating this extraordinary body of film.

ABOUT ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE CINEMA

Founded in 1997, Alamo Drafthouse has been heralded for unique programming events, great food and drinks, and high exhibition standards, earning accolades including “Best Theater Ever” by Time Magazine and “The Coolest Theater in the World” by Wired. A September 2018 Market Force Information survey of nearly 13,000 moviegoers across the country gave Alamo Drafthouse the #1 ranking for Favorite Movie Theater, Best Service, and all food and beverage-related categories. Alamo Drafthouse provides a unique combination of theater and restaurant, showing first-run movies, independent films and special events with an extensive menu made from scratch. Guests order all food and drinks from servers who quietly attend to them throughout the movie from inside the theater.