FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Denver Film Media Contacts:
Keith Garcia: keith@denverfilm.org
Marty Schechter: marty@schechterpr.com
Denver Silent Film Festival Media Contact:
Howie Movshovitz: hmovshovitz@cs.com
Films presented with live musical accompaniment
Tickets on sale at denverfilm.org/
DENVER – Aug. 28, 2023 –
The Denver Silent Film Festival (DSFF), presented by Denver Film, announced today the lineup for its 10th edition, Sept. 22-24 at the Sie Film Center, 2510 E. Colfax Ave.. Individual tickets go on Aug. 28 at 10 a.m. and are $12 for Denver Film Members/$15 Non-Members; Festival passes are also available for $65 for Denver Film Members/$75 Non-Members. All tickets are available at denverfilm.org.
The three-day Denver Silent Film Festival features 16 short and feature-length silent era films from pioneer filmmakers, including Oscar Micheaux, Alice Guy and John Ford. In celebration of the silent era tradition, films will be presented with live musical accompaniment. Accompanists include the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, Hank Troy, Donald Sosin and Joanna Seaton, Tenia Nelson, The Dollhouse Thieves, the University of Colorado at Denver College of Arts & Media Student Orchestra, Todd Reid and Alicia Svigals.
The Festival opens Sept. 22 with a presentation of the 1925 comedy-drama Lady Windermere’s Fan directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Freely adapted from Oscar Wilde’s play of the same name, the film satirizes Victorian society and marriage as it follows a glamorous woman who believes her husband is having an affair.
Opening Night will also include a presentation of the David Shepard Career Achievement Award to Hank Troy and Rodney Sauer for their outstanding contributions to the silent cinema. A part of the DSFF family since day one, Hank Troy is a renowned jazz pianist, silent film accompanist and teacher. He first accompanied a silent film in 1971 at The Denver Folklore Center, and hasn’t stopped since. He was resident accompanist at the Denver Center Cinema in the early 1980s, and in 1985 he helped start the summer silent film series at Boulder Chautauqua. He has played at many film festivals around the region and was Music Director at The Telluride Film Festival for 25 years.
Under the leadership of composer and accompanist Rodney Sauer, the five-piece Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra has become known and loved around the world. Mont Alto plays regularly at The Telluride Film Festival and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. The group has played Sauer’s compositions on dozens of silent film video releases. Sauer and Mont Alto have opened every DSFF.
The Festival concludes Sunday, Sept. 24 with a presentation of 1924’s Austrian film The City Without Jews, which follows the political and personal consequences of a law forcing all Jews to leave the country.
“Silent film can be magical. Without human speech, images become especially resonant and the great silent films reach towards poetry and music,” said Denver Silent Film Festival Director Howie Movshovitz. “And with wonderful musical accompaniment, films like these in the Denver Silent Film Festival may become transcendent. Come and take a look. Silent film demands no training, just a willing presence to be transported.”
Established in 2010, the Denver Silent Film Festival is dedicated to celebrating the extraordinary body of silent film and inviting contemporary audiences to immerse themselves into the foundation of film history.
Click to see the full schedule and purchase tickets.
Members of the press interested in covering the Denver Silent Film Festival may contact Keith Garcia at keith@denverfilm.org or Marty Schechter at marty@schechterpr.com.
FILMS IN PROGRAM:
LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Opening Night – Friday, Sept. 22, 7 p.m.
Acclaimed filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch directed this silent gem based on the Oscar Wilde play, which satirizes Victorian society and marriage. After finding out that her husband, Lord Windermere, has been visiting a certain Mrs. Erlynne and giving her large sums of money, Lady Windermere accuses him of cheating on her. Although he swears he is not being unfaithful, Lord Windermere cannot explain his actions — and invites Mrs. Erlynne to his wife’s coming-of-age birthday ball… where all things will be revealed.
Accompanied by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
THE NARROW TRAIL
Director: Lambert Hillyer
Saturday, Sept. 23, 10 a.m.
Ice Harding, an outlaw with a devoted gang, holds up a stagecoach and encounters a San Francisco vice king and his innocent niece. Ice is taken with the young woman, who at first she sees nothing in him, but she begins to come around when her uncle tries to swindle Ice, and the outlaw himself undergoes a change of course under the influence of the girl.
Accompanied by Hank Troy
UPSTREAM
Director: John Ford
Saturday, Sept. 23, 12:10 p.m.
Among the residents of a theatrical boarding-house is the last member of a once-great acting family, who has fallen down on his luck. When an offer to star in a London “Hamlet” comes, he takes lessons from a faded former star and goes on to huge success–but the climb soon finds him forgetting his old friends on the way.
Accompanied by Donald Sosin and Joanna Seaton
ALICE GUY SHORTS PROGRAM
Director: Alice Guy
Saturday, Sept. 23, 2:15 p.m
“The French filmmaking pioneer, Alice Guy, is the very first person of any gender to have her name on screen as the maker of a movie — The Cabbage Fairy in 1896. Historian Anthony Slide says that Guy almost single-handedly established the idea of the director of a film. She worked her way up at Gaumont from secretary to leading director. She directed everything at Gaumont up to 1906, and she hired male filmmakers who later became major figures — Zecca, Feuillade. And she was really good — I think that many of her early shorts show far more sophistication and wit than the work of her contemporaries.” – Howie Movshovitz. Films include A Fool and His Money, Starting Something, Midwife to the Upper Class, Mixed Pets, The Strike, Drunken Mattress and Two Little Rangers.
Accompanied by Hank Troy
THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD
Director: Irving Cummings
Saturday, Sept. 23, 4:30 p.m
The Johnstown Flood re-creates one of the greatest disasters in American history, when, in 1889, over 2,000 people in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, lost their lives. In her first major role, Janet Gaynor plays a teenage girl smitten with dashing engineer George O’Brien, whose pleadings about the imminent collapse of the local dam are ignored. It’s up to Gaynor to ride through the streets à la Paul Revere to warn the townspeople of the imminent disaster. After 97 years, the movie’s flood sequence is still a pre-CGI marvel of optical effects, matte paintings, and miniatures.
Preceded by the short film Land Beyond the Sunset
Accompanied by The Dollhouse Thieves
MORAL
Director: Willi Wolfe
Saturday, Sept. 23, 7 p.m
An early pioneer of censorship-pushing, this story of a revue entertainer who humiliates the Emilsberg morality committee who condemn her show, by filming them when they call on her in private, turns the morality tables in all the right directions.
Accompanied by the UCD Student Film Orchestra with Donald Sosin and Todd Reid
UCD STUDENT-MADE SILENTS
Sunday, Sept. 24, 10 a.m.
Returning to a program from years past, the short films in this program are made by students in the Department of Film & Television at CU-Denver, tasked with creating films in 2023 that would fit well with or expand upon the filmmaking ideas of 1923. Music for each film was selected by the filmmakers themselves.
BODY AND SOUL
Director: Oscar Micheaux
Sunday, Sept. 24, 12 p.m.
A bold and controversial film by pioneer independent filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, Body And Soul marked Paul Robeson’s screen debut and was the only motion picture he made with an African-American director. Robeson plays a hard-drinking thief and vicious womanizer who poses as a pastor in a small southern town. Through this diabolical ruse he preys upon a young member of his flock, not unlike the murderous minister of The Night Of The Hunter. The film’s depiction of clergy was deemed so incendiary that at least one prominent Black newspaper refused to even mention the film in its column.
Accompanied by Tenia Nelson
THE CITY WITHOUT JEWS
Director: H.K. Breslauer
Closing Film – Sunday, Sept. 24, 2:30 p.m.
Set in the Austrian city of Utopia (a thinly-disguised stand-in for Vienna), the story follows the political and personal consequences of an anti-Semitic law passed by the National Assembly forcing all Jews to leave the country.
Accompanied by Donald Sosin & Alicia Svigals
Made Possible with support from the Sunrise Foundation of Education and the Arts
Sponsors
Bonfils-Stanton Foundation, CCI + NEA, CU Denver College of Arts & Media, David Emrich, SCFD, Sheila Rucki + Michael Mitchel, Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts, Woods & Son Piano Company
About Denver Film
Founded in 1978, Denver Film is a membership-based, 501(c)(3) nonprofit cultural institution that produces film events throughout the year, including the award-winning Denver Film Festival and the popular, summertime series Film on the Rocks. With a vision to cultivate community and transform lives through film, Denver Film provides opportunities for diverse audiences to discover film through creative, thought-provoking experiences.
The permanent home of Denver Film, the Sie FilmCenter is Denver’s only year-round cinematheque, presenting a weekly-changing calendar of first-run exclusives and arthouse revivals both domestic and foreign, narrative and documentary – over 600 per year, all shown in their original language and format. Denver Film’s one-of-a-kind programs annually reach more than 200,000 film lovers and film lovers-in-training.
About Denver Silent Film Festival
The Denver Silent Film Festival was established in September 2010. The Denver Silent Film Festival presents a broad spectrum of silent film by programming a lively and thought-provoking mix of educational and entertaining films. American and foreign classics, as well as lesser-known rare and restored films will be presented.
