Tag Archives: cinema of Germany

A rainbow of silent film

Posted on 21 August 2017 by

Regular readers will have noticed that things have been pretty quiet around Silents, Please! for the last year or so. Partly, this was because I channelled a lot of energy into researching, writing and drawing my Feminist Media Histories article: a very … Continue reading →

Posted in Film, Misc | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Varieté at the NZIFF: An interview with composer Johannes Contag

Posted on 24 August 2016 by

Varieté (also known as Variety, Vaudeville and Jealousy) is one of the most prominent works of the Weimar cinema. Directed by E. A. Dupont for UFA in 1925, it is as famous for Karl Freund’s freewheeling cinematography as for the … Continue reading →

Posted in Film festivals, interview, Live cinema | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Book review: “The Film Explainer” by Gert Hofmann

Posted on 14 April 2016 by

My grandfather Karl Hofmann (1873-1944) worked for many years in the Apollo cinema on the Helenenstrasse in Limbach/Saxony. I knew him towards the end of his life, with his artist’s hat, his walking stick, his broad gold wedding ring that … Continue reading →

Posted in Books | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

The film star performing the film star: Asta Nielsen in Die Filmprimadonna (DE 1913)

Posted on 16 September 2015 by

“Lower the flags in her honour; she is incomparable and without peer.” So wrote early film theorist Béla Balázs of Asta Nielsen in his 1924 book Der Sichtbare Mensch (The Visible Man). It is well-known that Nielsen was one of the first international … Continue reading →

Posted in Film | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Double trouble: Die falsche Asta Nielsen | The False Asta Nielsen (DE 1915)

Posted on 31 January 2015 by

Die falsche Asta Nielsen is a film that, barring a miracle, I will never see: no copies are known to exist. It’s a great shame, because it looks like a lot of fun! Asta in a double role, a comedy … Continue reading →

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Asta Nielsen’s Hamlet (DE 1921)

Posted on 9 September 2014 by

What if Hamlet was actually … a woman? That is the central premise of the 1921 film adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, starring Asta Nielsen in the role of Prince Hamlet. The concept is drawn from an 1881 publication, The Mystery … Continue reading →

Posted in Film | Tagged , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Das Liebes-ABC | The ABC of Love (DE 1916)

Posted on 28 August 2014 by

Asta Nielsen: great actress, or greatest actress? She’s by far one of my favourite things about the silent era. Much has been written about her vitality, her versatility, and her charisma, so I won’t belabour the point – but it … Continue reading →

Posted in Film | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments