FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Denver Film Media Contacts:
Keith Garcia: keith@denverfilm.org
Marty Schechter: marty@schechterpr.com
Denver Silent Film Festival Media Contacts:
Howie Movshovitz: hmovshovitz@cs.com
DENVER – Aug. 26, 2024 – The Denver Silent Film Festival (DSFF), presented by Denver Film, announced today the lineup for its 11th edition, Sept. 27-29 at the Sie FilmCenter, 2510 E. Colfax Ave. Individual tickets, on sale now, are $12 for Denver Film Members/$15 Non-Members. Festival passes are also available for $60 for Denver Film Members/$75 Non-Members. All tickets are available at denverfilm.org.
The three-day Denver Silent Film Festival includes nine silent-era feature films and a shorts program showcasing groundbreaking works in early cinema from around the globe. In celebration of the silent-era tradition, films will be presented with live musical accompaniment by local musicians. Accompanists include the world-renowned Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, Hank Troy, Tenia Nelson, The Dollhouse Thieves, and Rodney Sauer.
The Festival opens Sept. 27 with a presentation of the 1928 adventure film Beggars of Life. Directed by William A. Wellman, whose Wings (1927) had just won the first-ever Academy Award for Best Picture, Beggars of Life follows a young girl dressed as a boy who flees town after killing her abusive stepfather. With the help of a young vagabond, she traverses through a male-dominated underworld in her quest to escape the police and reach Canada. The Festival concludes Sunday, Sept. 29 with a newly restored 4K presentation of Henry A. Pollard’s 1926 comedy Poker Faces, which presents a hilarious film to send out this year’s festival on a high note.
“A businessman hires a woman to substitute for his wife who can’t make an important business dinner. It’s not a good decision. But it’s a chance to see the unique star Edward Everitt Horton in a delightful silent film” said DSFF co-founder and programmer Howie Movshovitz. “Beggars of Life is beautiful and touching – plus, it gives us a chance to see Louise Brooks before she went to Germany, and ‘Louise Brooks’ the great vamp.”
Opening Night will also include a presentation of the David Shepard Career Achievement Award to Anita Monga for her outstanding contributions to silent cinema.
“Since 2009, Anita Monga has been the artistic director of The San Francisco Silent Film Festival, and no one fits the bill for the David Shepard Career Achievement award better than her,” said Movshovitz. “When David Dynak, Montine Hansl, and I first decided to create The Denver Silent Film Festival, our model was instantly The San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Look over past San Francisco programs. They’re smart, I’d say dazzling, for their breadth and depth. They’re obviously shaped by people who know a ton about silent film, are curious, and have plenty of nerve.”
“The Denver Silent Film Festival is such a special and unique jewel to add to the crown of Denver Film,” said Keith Garcia, Artistic Director of the Sie FilmCenter, “On top of some really great new restorations of these nearly lost classics, our audience is lucky to enjoy a one-of–a-kind experience with every film courtesy of the live music scores that accompany them, courtesy of some of Colorado’s greatest music talent.”
This year’s lineup also includes three special pay-what-you-can screenings in which tickets are available for a minimum of $5, as a means to be accessible to our community of film lovers. These presentations include D.W. Griffith’s thrilling 1916 historical epic Intolerance, a brand-new restoration of Oscar Micheaux’s 1920 “race film” Symbol of the Unconquered, and a presentation of the shorts program The Beginners.
“I’ve thought for a long time that we should look at the very earliest films (The Beginners) and at D.W. Griffith’s not-really-an-apology apology epic (for The Birth of a Nation) Intolerance, films which really do set a map for much of what’s come since, and they’re wonderful to watch on their own,” said Movshovitz.
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 in 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.
BEGGARS OF LIFE
Director: William A Wellman
Opening Night – Friday, Sept. 27, 7 p.m.
Louise Brooks – not yet an international phenomenon — plays a young woman who kills her abusive stepfather, runs off with a hobo and hops trains disguised as a boy. Director William Wellman makes visceral the feeling of being unjustly pursued and living in constant danger. A beautiful and touching film, chosen for the festival by David Shepard honoree Anita Monga.
Accompanied by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
THE SEA HAWK
Director: Frank Lloyd
Saturday, Sept. 28, 10 a.m
Jealousy, deceit, murder, and piracy! Coveting his fiancée, Sir Oliver Tressilian’s (Milton Sills) jealous half-brother frames Tressilian for murder and arranges his banishment to a Spanish slave galley. But Tressilian escapes, rises to captain a pirate ship out of the Barbary Coast and acquires a fearsome reputation. Yet the love between Tressilian and his former fiancée–who has been forced to marry Tressilian’s half-brother, a man she loathes–never wanes … until, in a daring duel to the death, Tressilian fights to regain his honor and his love! Based on the novel by Rafael Sabatini.
100th Anniversary!
Accompanied by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
THE ORGANIST OF ST. VITUS CATHEDRAL
Director: Martin Frič
Saturday, Sept. 28, 1:30 p.m.
Celebrated actor/composer/theater director Karel Hašler is the organist in this beautiful Czech film (original language title: Varhaník U Svateho Víta). Jaroslav Blazek’s exquisite cinematography imparts a dreamlike quality to this drama set in Prague, an affecting story of devotion, suicide, blackmail, and atonement.
Accompanied by Hank Troy
SYMBOL OF THE UNCONQUERED
Director: Oscar Micheaux
Saturday, Sept. 28, 3:45 p.m.
In this silent film, Eve Mason (Iris Hall) learns of her grandfather’s death, leaves her small Southern town and travels west to inspect her newly inherited land. With help from her neighbor, Hugh Van Allen (Walker Thompson), she arrives at her grandfather’s homestead. When the self-loathing Jefferson Driscoll (Lawrence Chenault) learns that Van Allen’s property sits atop a vast oil reserve, he teams up with a group of unsavory criminals to threaten Mason and force Van Allen off his land. DCP restoration by the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique.
Accompanied by Tenia Nelson
THE BEGINNERS (Early Silent Short Films)
Saturday, Sept. 28, 5:30 p.m.
A look at short films by the earliest filmmakers – Thomas Edison, the Lumiere brothers, Alice Guy, and Georges Mèliḗs – whose work showed the filmmakers who followed them the way to do it. Even at the beginning you can see the delight these artists found in inventing an artform.
Accompanied by Rodney Sauer
THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE
Director: Victor Sjöström
Saturday, Sept. 28, 7:30 p.m.
The last person to die on New Year’s Eve before the clock strikes twelve is doomed to take the reins of Death’s chariot and work tirelessly collecting fresh souls for the next year. So says the legend that drives The Phantom Carriage (Körkarlen), directed by the father of Swedish cinema, Victor Sjöström. The story, based on a novel by Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf, concerns an alcoholic, abusive ne’er-do-well (Sjöström himself) who is shown the error of his ways, and the pure-of-heart Salvation Army sister who believes in his redemption. This extraordinarily rich and innovative silent classic (which inspired Ingmar Bergman to make movies) is a Dickensian ghost story and a deeply moving morality tale, as well as a showcase for groundbreaking special effects.
Accompanied by Hank Troy
INTOLERANCE
Director: D.W. Griffith
Sunday, Sept. 29, 10 a.m.
Director D.W. Griffith’s epic Intolerance is a silent masterpiece steeped in cinematic history and a spectacle to behold. The film presents four narratives stretching from biblical to modern times, held together by themes of intolerance, man’s inhumanity to man, hypocrisy, bigotry, religious hatred, persecution, discrimination, and injustice.
Accompanied by The Dollhouse Thieves
THREE SHOTS OF BUSTER (A BUSTER KEATON REVUE)
Sunday, Sept. 29, 2 p.m.
ONE WEEK
Director: Buster Keaton, Eddie Cline
Buster and Sybil exit a chapel as newlyweds. Among the gifts is a portable house you easily put together in one week. It doesn’t help that Buster’s rival for Sybil switches the numbers on the crates containing the house parts.
Accompanied by Tenia Nelson
THE PLAY HOUSE
Director: Buster Keaton, Eddie Cline
In this classic short about a theater production gone awry, Buster Keaton plays a stagehand who dreams he is every character in a vaudeville show.
Accompanied by Tenia Nelson
SHERLOCK JR.
Director: Buster Keaton
Buster plays a movie projectionist who daydreams himself into the movies he is showing and merges with the figures and the backgrounds on the screen. While dreaming he is Conan Doyle’s master detective, he snoops out brilliant discoveries. Restored by Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory in association with Cohen Film Collection.
100th Anniversary!
Accompanied by Tenia Nelson
Denver Silent Film Festival Closing Film
POKER FACES
Director: Harry A. Pollard
Sunday, Sept. 29, 5:00 p.m.
This madcap farce stars the king of the double-take, Edward Everett Horton, as a henpecked husband who is desperately trying to close a contract to please his boss. When his wife, played by the equally adept Laura La Plante, is unable to attend an all-important business dinner he hires a woman to play her. But she turns out to be married to an insanely jealous boxer!
Accompanied by Hank Troy
Bonfils Stanton Foundation, Prime Meridian Media, SCFD, Sheila K O’Brien, Sheila Rucki & Michael Mitchel, William Hoffman
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.
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.
