Screens large and small babble away at us — and yet sometimes there just isn’t anything good on. How about a century-old film classic?
There was a whole world of silent cinema in the decades before modern Hollywood, with its own array of glamorous stars, eccentric directors, faithful book adaptations and sweeping adventure sagas.
At the 91±¬ÁÏ, no know knows that era and many other aspects of film better than , associate professor and associate chair of the .
91±¬ÁÏ Notebook caught up with Bean for some suggestions of free silent film viewing opportunities this fall. Because when you’re out of stuff to watch, everything old is new again.
View silent, other films online through 91±¬ÁÏ Libraries
91±¬ÁÏ faculty and staff have access to lots of classic silent films, and other films through the Alexander Street online collection. .
Slapstick Sundays. Each week, on YouTube, film historian and silent film accompanist present three slapstick shorts from the silent era in their Silent Comedy Watch Party, with Model at the piano. The films are around 10-14 minutes long and the two give each a short introduction about the actors and quality of the film copy.
“Ben streams from his living room, and plays the piano while projecting the shorts — often in 16 mm, on the wall,” Bean said. “Fun!” The stream goes live a few minutes before the show’s start at 3 p.m. EDT Sundays on .
From London online: Kennington Bioscope, a silent film screening series based in
London at the Cinema Museum, has moved online during the pandemic, and is now live-streaming special silent-era films and archiving the streams for later accessibility. “The array of programs is quite amazing,” said Bean. , including “” from 1917. .
From The Netherlands: Bean calls the , which manages more than 40,000 films of all genres “among the best of the world’s archives of early cinema.” Titles from the silent era and beyond available on the museum’s .
Bean is the Robert Jolin Osborne Professor of Cinema and Media Studies. Osborne was an actor and film historian best known for 20 years as a host for Turner Classic Movies.