Cinematic Era: 1929 Vintage

'Film star puppets, including Al Jolson.' (British Film Catalogue)

Fishing boat

Join us for a 9-minute walk through the city and its main park, Planty, caught by the eye of Mysłowicz, founder of the Lumen Film Institute. Unlike most major Polish cities, Kraków wasn’t destroyed during the Second World War, which means Planty krakowskie gives you a splendid opportunity to almost feel like you’re there today.

An Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon.

Hermann Hähnle demonstrates some of his camera techniques for capturing wild life at the Federsee lake in Southern Germany.

A hillbilly and an Italian leave the countryside, go to São Paulo and are scammed by a crook. They end up being chased by a police officer, and without a penny in their pockets, they end up returning to the countryside. It's considered a lost film, but a reconstituted version was made by researchers at the Universidade Federal Fluminense.

After the civil war in Russia, white guard officer Aleksey emigrates to Bulgaria.

Bobbe Arnst accompanied by Peggy Ellis on piano plays us a few songs.

A tough newspaper reporter and his pretty assistant are investigating a double murder, and soon find themselves the targets of the as yet unknown murderer.

Reception with Ambassadors to Ecuador when President Isidro Ayora took office. Aspects of Public Administration in education and health.

A British romantic drama film directed by J. Steven Edwards

Harry Fox & Beatrice Curtis perform parts of their vaudeville act.

Dooley and Sales vaudeville act 'Dooley's the Name'.

The Friday Morning Bird, Flower, & Bridge Whist Club has invited Donald Ogden Stewart to speak to them about the lives of birds. He explains that he has gotten to be close to birds because he treats them as equals. He starts with the experience that first aroused his interest in birds: an encounter with a bald eagle in a hotel room.

Miss Merrill wants to know how the lads got the ideas for some of their songs, so Dick and Larry proceed to offer some examples. Here, the film cuts to a series of flashbacks which are allegedly true incidents from Rodgers and Hart's scuffling days.

Horace Heidt and His Californians plays "Tiger Rag", "Painting the Clouds with Sunshine", "Carnival of Venice" and "I'll Never Ask for More".

The city of São Paulo at the end of the 1920s. Urbanism, fashion, public monuments, industrialization, historical facts, coffee production expansion, education and the sound of daily life. Using the classic documentary Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (1927) as a model, Hungarian filmmakers Adalberto Kemeny and Rodolf Lustig, who owned one of the best film laboratories that Brazil relied on at the time, made this documentary.

Mannequin hands hold a pair of dice. A castle is perched on a hilltop. Below it, a posh, modern villa. Meanwhile, far from Paris, two men with masked faces play dice in a bar. They decide to drive to Paris. Country roads, hills, fences. The posh "chateau" appears again: meticulous garden, fancy interior, odd sculptures. And at home? "No one, NO ONE." For the next two days, masked figures play dice, frolic by the pool, perform exercises with a ball. Two new figures arrive. Masked. They search and find the dice. They dance. Mannequin hands hold a pair of dice.

A Krazy Kat short.

A girl undresses while talking on the telephone.

Vitaphone short in which Oklahoma Bob and his two "daughters" perform a series of musical numbers, including an exciting new dance craze.

Frank Orth strikes a conversation with a lady feeding imaginary birds.

Charles Hackett singing "I Look Into Your Garden" & "I Heard You Singing".

Contains: Lima-Guayaquil raid; the coal man; our cartoonists in action; artistic photography; social album, Mrs. Lola Leguía de Martínez Molins; inauguration of the San Cristóbal cross; final of the National Football Championship; leaving Mass at Santo Domingo; Sacsayhuamán; echoes of the New Year

Alberto Santana's first film directed in Peru followed the deep-rooted tradition of imitating the style of Charles Chaplin's comedy. Sporting a mustache and bowler hat, the Mexican dancer and bullfighter Rodolfo Areu played the lead role. Areu, who performed variety acts with Julián Santa Cruz's Cuban revue and comedy company, offered as the central attraction of his show what appeared to be an impeccable imitation of Charlie Chaplin. The surviving accounts agree that, like Chaplin, it was a kind of unacknowledged remake of The Kid (1921), and that the liveliness of Areu's pantomime was the film's main attraction.

A promotional film about Sumatra, with shots including Lake Toba, country houses, the market in Pasanggrahan, trucks rigged with oxen, Fort de Kock, traditional costumes, the harbour of Padang, and the performance of various dances.

A physician's wife becomes violently jealous of her husband when he receives a late-night call from a female patient.

A Screen Songs short.

Vitaphone #715

Pathé-Natan

An American of generous girth, Teddy Brown (born Abraham Himmelbrand, 1900-1946) also played saxophone and drums, and worked with the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra for 4 years before turning to dance-band work. He finally achieved popularity in cabaret and variety with his xylophone act.

Flaming Canyons was released by Castle Films in 1929 as part of a series called “Castle Color Novelties.” The film is a feast for the eyes, featuring a stunning palette of stencil colors in red, orange, pink, green, yellow, pale blue, and light brown. These colors are overlaid onto images of the famous canyons of the American Southwest: Zion, Bryce, and the Grand Canyon. As is common with travel films, Flaming Canyons ranges across multiple scenic highlights, condensing a trip that would take several days in person into a running time of just over 13 minutes on screen. The purpose of such films was two-fold: to promote actual tourism to the region, and more broadly, to provide a vicarious tourist experience for the audience in the movie theater. The film alternates between images of natural landscapes (rock formations, cliffs, canyons) and images of recreation (touring cars, the Zion Hotel, the Grand Canyon Hotel).

A rather disjointed short finds an explorer wandering through Ancient Egypt.

One of the first sociological and ethnographic documentary films worldwide, made by the team of sociologists and students of Professor Dimitrie Gusti (1880-1955) in the village of Drăguş, Făgăraş County, Romania.

Suresh Chabria writes: ‘Continuing Jamai Babu’s association of the city with sexual exploits and licence, this one-reel comedy is about ‘a gentleman recently turned a loafer’ or a would-be Lothario at large. On the look-out for a female companion in a park, he is involved in various clumsily executed gags. In one of them a dog rips out the seat of his new trousers. But ever resourceful, he gets the patch painted by a man who is nonchalantly painting a nearby fence. Pursuing the damsel he fancies, he manages to kidnap the wrong woman who is also dressed in a black veil. The shotgun marriage ends mortifyingly for the hero—he has married an ugly hag’

Known as the White Outlaw for the kerchief he wears, Johnny Douglas decides to go straight. Getting a job as a cowhand he gives the kerchief to his new friend Ted Williams. When the rancher's daughter, the girl friend of Ted, agrees to marry the man holding the note on the ranch so he won't foreclose, Ted uses the kerchief when he robs the stage. When Ted is spotted and jailed, Johnny has a plan to return the money and clear Ted.

Film number 3 of the British Avantgarde BFI tape is a tricky crime short where you never get to see the faces of the actors or any conclusive idea what the story is about (if there is one). It's a quite interesting anthology of typical mystery scenes and shots exposing the genre to its barest essentia

This story is built up with filmed documents in an experimental fashion.

In 1929, the German Book Traders’ Association declared 22 March, the anniversary of Goethe’s death, the “Day of the Book”. To boost general awareness of the date, the politically versatile educational filmmaker Hans Cürlis was commissioned to produce this silent signature spot. Through cross-fades, the imagined worlds of a variety of readers – young or old, workers or intellectuals – merge with the stylised realities of their lives.

The film shows a headstrong tractor driver's frivolous attitude towards his duty. He quits his job, gets drunk at a wedding and crashes a tractor.

A beautiful, Pathécolor vision of the Powys market town of Machynlleth, famous as the location where the rebellious Owen Glendower was crowned Prince of Wales in 1404 (Cambria is the classical name for Wales).

A Swiss boy tries to deliver a carved wooden dog. A short exploration of Switzerland ensues. Missing some footage at the head. Harvard Film Archive #21029, reformatted from 16mm silent print.

Church, Portería and Convent of San Francisco

"A Day in Liverpool stands as probably the first film production specifically about Liverpool, rendering it as a place with a particular identity, character and international status. The opening shots, showing Pier Head with its ensemble of architectural landmarks - the Liver Building, Cunard Building, Port of Liverpool Building (locally known as the Three Graces) - not only developed visual icons synonymous with Liverpool, but helped set in place a moving image language indispensable for subsequent film productions promoting the city." - Richard Koeck

Opera singer Carolina Segrera belts out a couple tunes in this early Vitaphone short that has her being backed by don Alberto and His Argentines.

Drawn with steaming ink, Koko and Fitz try to cool off.

A vaudeville style comedy/musical short about a couple that gets engaged and their fighting families.

A fight of Serbian army against occupying forces during WWI.

Unreleased film, produced simultaneously with "Acabaram-se os Otários".

Based on Romanian legends and folk tales about the outlaws from Carpathian Mountains. The film is the middle episode of an adventure trilogy that almost four decades ago anticipated the series of local films with lawless heroes from the 1960s and 1970s; unfortunately, the other two films, "Iancu Jianu" and "Ciocoii", were not preserved.