The Film Schedule - TSFF 2020

Experience "LIVE" Cinema
"Where Images and Music do the talking"
Experience "LIVE" Cinema
"Where Images and Music do the talking"
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Friday June 12, 2020 NEW DATE
Revue Cinema,
7pm

MOULIN ROUGE 1928 UK 127MIN
Director: E A Dupont
Olga Tschechowa, Eve Gray, Jean Bradin
4K Restoration b/w-Canadian Premiere
 
Move over Baz Luhrmann-you ain’t seen nothing yet!
In the sparkling 1920s City of Lights, anything goes. This lavishly exuberant British production by German expressionist pioneer E A Dupont (Varieté –TSFF2012) and Art Director Alfred Junge (future Oscar winner for Black Narcissus 1947) recreates the blazing glamour of the world’s most decadent cabaret. They even went so far as to rent the famous club and the entire cast of its Paris-New York Revue for the production.
 
At the Moulin Rouge, everyone worships at the feet of the alluring diva Parysia (played to the hilt by Russian-German screen sensation Olga Tschechowa) including André, her daughter’s faithless fiancé. But the corrupt love triangle, beset by lust and obsession, comes crashing down with devastating consequences.
 
Restoration by BFI (British Film Institute)
 
Film courtesy of Studiocanal
Accompaniment: Bill O’Meara
$16 in Advance Buy Tickets

Saturday June 13, 2020 NEW DATE
Revue Cinema
2pm

1000 Laffs: CHAPLIN/KEATON-VIVE LA DIFFERENCE! 107MIN
 
Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton are two undisputed  comic masters of the silent cinema. And we at the TSFF would never put one above  the others. Why would we? Both are geniuses. Both are uniquely themselves. Both  should be celebrated.
While the future Little Tramp and Great Stone Face were  essentially born and raised on the stage (and the literal school of hard  knocks), their very different upbringings created two entirely idiosyncratic  approaches to film comedy, almost from the first minute a camera was pointed at  them.
Join us as we examine how Charlie and Buster explore  similar themes in their own vastly singular ways, in the films ONE A.M., THE  PLAYHOUSE, MY WIFE’S RELATIONS and THE IMMIGRANT.
Introduced by Chris Seguin
 
Accompaniment: Jordan Klapman

$16 -$13 Senior/Student Buy Tickets

Revue Cinema
4:45pm

FILIBUS: THE MYSTERIOUS AIR PIRATE 1915 ITALY 70MIN
Director: Mario Roncoroni
Christina Ruspoli, Filippo Vallino, Giovanni Spano
4K Restoration b/w tinted -Canadian Premiere
 
Who is Filibus? The mysterious Filibus is the “feminist steampunk jewel thief cross-dressing aviatrix” in a lighthearted pulpy serial type thriller, similar to Feuillade’s Les Vampires in style. Produced by a small studio in Turin and shot on the Italian Riviera, it’s a fun, sassy romp through numerous tropes.
Our feminist super villain, bent on stealing jewels, enters into a cat and mouse duel of wits and bravado with the true blue detective out to stop her cold! Yes, there are private airships involved! Penned by future science fiction writer Giovanni Bertinetti, this deliriously insane thriller is delightfully mad and thoroughly entertaining.
 
Restoration by EYE Filmmuseum
Film courtesy of Milestone Films
Watch the trailer: https://vimeo.com/315545513

JUST ADDED: THE ADVENTURES OF ALOHA WANDERWELL

 
Before there was a Laura Croft or Indiana Jones there was a Canadian born teenager whose real life exploits were the stuff of legend. Catch a glimpse of her globe-trotting adventures as she became the “First Woman to Drive Around the World” 1922-1927. But that’s not all she accomplished; she was an explorer, filmmaker, aviatrix, author, Guinness World Record Holder.
 
Film Clips courtesy of the Richard Diamond Productions  
 
Read about her life and adventures: www.alohawanderwell.com
   Twitter: https://twitter.com/alohawanderwell
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alohawanderwell
Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/alohawanderwell


Accompaniment: Laura Sgroi


Sunday June 14, 2020 NEW DATE
Revue Cinema
1:00 pm

CHILDREN OF DIVORCE 1927 USA 70MIN
Director: Frank Lloyd, Josef von Sternberg (uncredited)
Clara Bow, Esther Ralston, Gary Cooper
 
Clara Bow stars in an all too rare dramatic role as a tragic jazz age flapper and her real life lover, Gary Cooper has his first leading man role.   
“Kitty (Clara Bow) wrestles with a legacy of neglect. She tries to beat society at its own arbitrary game, to grasp happiness by deceit. She loses. Wounded by a lonely childhood and misguided by her mother, Kitty comes to recognize her youthful freedom for what it was: a chimera. Just as the collective trauma of WWI gave rise to the anything-goes culture of the 1920s, Kitty’s traumatic childhood cultivated her fatal combination of wildness, cynicism, and naïveté. In contrast to her upbeat, triumphant flapper in It, Bow proved herself a great dramatic actress as the haunted flapper. Through her character’s downward spiral, Bow captured the Jazz Age tragedy so beautifully articulated by an admirer of hers, F. Scott Fitzgerald: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”-Nora Fiore aka Nitrate Diva
Watch the trailer:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHF3MWKMxYY
Restoration by Library of Congress
Film courtesy of Flicker Alley
Accompaniment: Morgan-Paige Melbourne

$16 -$13 Senior/Student Buy Tickets
Co-presented by

Curated by journalist and critic Nathalie Atkinson, Designing the  Movies is the monthly screening series that focuses on art direction, set  decoration, costume, and production design.
Revuel Cinema
2:45 pm

GALLERY OF MONSTERS 1924 SPAIN/FRANCE 93MIN
Director: Jaque Catelain
Jaque Catelain, Lois Moran, Jean Murat
4K Restoration b/w tinted -Canadian Premiere

Despite the lurid title, this isn’t a horror film. Virtually unknown and unseen for decades, this beautifully photographed, at times spectacular, production follows two lovers who flee the pressures of family and impoverishment to join a travelling circus. But all the glitter of the limelight and cheering crowds mask a much more dangerous reality closing in on them as they discover the real monsters are not their fellow sideshow performers.
Producer Marcel L’Herbier (L’Inhumaine-TSFF2017) persuaded his star from that film to both direct and act. You’ll notice overtones that will be utilized years later in The Man Who Laughs 1928 and a foretelling use of the powerful dynamics found in Freaks. This gorgeous new restoration by Lobster Films showcases the creative confidence, sophisticated editing and surreal avant-garde touches common in European mid 1920s European productions.
 
Restoration by Lobster Films
Film courtesy of Flicker Alley
Accompaniment: Tania Gill  
RAFFLE DRAW 4:50
5:00pm

OUTSIDE THE LAW 1920 USA 75MIN
Director: Tod Browning
Priscilla Dean, Lon Chaney
 
The unconventional cinema of Tod Browning has become a cult favourite for its pulp fiction offerings on an assortment of underground characters-everything from carnies and crooks to imposters and vampires and out-right weirdos. He specialised in the shocking, the macabre and the perverse, successfully capitalised on the audience cravings for the lurid, edgy films.
In his second teaming with Chaney and Dean, he dives into a gritty, psychologically driven gangster film complete with Chaney in two very different roles-the first the fearsome gangster and the second in heavy disguise as the Buddhist Ah Wing*. He found a kindred spirit in both his stars-the Chaney collaborations are now well known, but Priscilla Dean really shines, exhibiting the same determination to strip away the veneer of civilized behavior with her characters. She’s a stands out as the tough moll and early feminist icon who can “talk a blue streak of razorblades” in the down and dirty, hard edged San Francisco underworld.  Browning would remake this film in 1930 with Edward G. Robinson in the gangster role.
 
*This film depicts some ethnic & racial stereotypes and prejudices that were more commonplace in western society a century ago. These depictions were wrong then as they are wrong now.
 
Restoration and Film courtesy of Universal Pictures
Accompaniment: Jordan Klapman
 

Monday June 15, 2020 New Date
Roncesvalles United Church, 214 Wright Ave.
7:30 pm
Toronto Theatre Organ Society presents
JUST ADDED: DOUBLE FEATURE CLOSING NIGHT
 
They say there are dozens of reasons to get married, but we say there are just as many reasons NOT to get married. Tonight we look at how women and men solve their respective dilemmas when faced with the prospect of matrimony.

GETTING MARY MARRIED 1919 USA 65min Restoration
 
Directed by Allan Dwan
 
Marion Davies has an early star turn as Mary, a young gal who doesn’t want to get married but wants to get married. Confused? Don’t be—there are valid reasons. But it’s getting tough for her to stay single when handsome Norman Kerry comes a calling. Directed by Toronto born Allan Dwan, this is the earliest complete Davies feature currently known and the Toronto Theatre Organ Society and Toronto Silent Film Festival are proud to present the Canadian debut of the restoration. Film generously provided by Edward Lorusso.

There will be an intermission between feature films.


THE DOLL 1919 GERMANY
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Ossi Oswalda, Hermann Thimig, Victor Janson

Based on the same short story that inspired the ballet Coppélia and the opera La Poupée, this cheeky, absurdist burlesque displays many of Lubitsch’s cinematic trademarks.
The sole family heir will do anything to avoid marriage. So when his uncle insists he marry one of the locals and start a family, he heads for the hills, finding refuge within a monastery. When the monks learn that his marital status would trigger a rather pompously large inheritance, their plans swing from the spiritual to their own financial straits and they come up with a cunning plan: have him marry a life-like mechanical doll--he gets his inheritance, doesn’t have to marry a person and the monks get a hefty reward in return. Problem solved! Or is it?
 
Plus: a plethora of shorts that spins comic tales of love and marriage.
 
Organ Score: Bill O’Meara
$17 in Advance from Toronto Theatre Organ Society
$20 at the Door (cash only)
 

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