Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, IT
1 to 8 October 2022
The Lichtspiel / Kinemathek curated a program of 22 9.5mm films coming from three different collections: Fondation Jêrome Seydoux Pathé, Cinémathèque Suisse and Lichtspiel itself. The films were screened throughout the week as opening programs. It was amazing to see them on a screen of this size. Thanks to all who supported the screenings.
Splicers
I have been taking pictures of the different models of splicers for 9.5mm for a while now, and every time I think I have found all our models, another one pops up. So I will start showing pictures, and add them as I stumble across.
Le Giornate del Cinema Muto
In less than a month the Fondation Jeròme Seydoux Pathé, the Cinémathèque Suisse and the Lichtspiel / Kinemathek Berne will be showing a selection of Pathé-Baby films at the Silent Film Festival in Pordenone. We created a little teaser for it.
Impressions from the opening of the exhibition
Saturday June 11th we opened the exhibition on the birthday 9.5mm. Our museologist Peter Fasnacht gave a tour, one of our technicians, Vladimir Malogajski explained some special equipment, David Landolf projected the films. Eliane Maurer and myself introduced the analogue and digital elements. Check out our agenda for more events to come!
Carnival / Fasnacht in Basel
In some parts of Switzerland February and March are very popular months. Basel and Lucerne for example feature big carnival processions. Whether some procession will take place or not ist currently still in the air (14.02.2022). We would like to offer a glimpse into the procession from somewhere around 1926, that shows how things were done then. The film opens with scenes from a “human zoo”(“Völkerschau”), then moves to a kids procession and then to the carnival. The film ends with shots from the zoo in Basel.
We received the film from a private collector, who in turn got the films from a liquidation and does not know the original owner either. I often wish we had more films made by “GOHA”, as the logo from the beginning of the film indicates the “producer” or “filmmaker”. All the films we have are well made.
If any body recognizes people or other important things that we missed out on, please let us know!
The notched title mechanism or how to watch porn in the 1930s
I would like to tell you about a collection of 9.5mm films that were handed over to the Austrian Film Museum in the 1970s. It’s a compilation of pornographic films, 13 reels in total, set in France in the 1930s. Some of the films have titles, often handwritten, and some are tinted, covering the film image in a yellow-orange color. The inexpensive third or fourth generation contact prints foreshadow their unknown origins. We don’t know who owned these porns, who compiled them or where one could acquire them in the 1930s.
However, the film material itself offers clues about the screening practice: On the inspection table I discovered notches, which are found on the side of the film. The notched title system is a unique feature of the 9,5mm format, which allows the film to pause during the projection. It was used for titles and intertitles in order to save costly film material. When the mechanism in the projector detects the notch, the film stops for a few seconds, allowing the audience to read the text. But in this case, the notches were not placed on title cards, as intended. The owner of the porn film collection added the notches manually, so they could linger on their preferred images.
I found a logo of a distribution company on some of the films. I would like to ask for your help identifying it. Half of the writing is cut off, it reads: “PULC [illegible] FILM présente”. Does anyone know this company, who distributed semi-amateur porn in the 1930s?
Could it be, that the company is named after “Pulcheria”, the Eastern Roman empress, who took a vow of chastity? Or is it “Pulcinella”, a character of the commedia dell’arte, who can not keep a secret?
Österreichisches Filmmuseum
In the dead of the night
On the phone my daughter Ronja. Out there, where we usually deposit the trash, there are two wooden boxes. A big one and a smaller, long one.
Ronja knows her father, knows that he is a collector and hunter, hunting from one fleamarket to the next. The devil knows why.
In the boxes are filmreels, looks old, and a projector – or is it a camera? Everything looks old, she says. And „Thought it might be interesting for you“. Ronja often thinks right, this time is no exception.
This is the story Pesche Maurer told us of his daughters and his find. Nobody knows who put this treasure into the trash to begin with. Next day, Pesche brought it to the Lichtspiel, where we will now catalogue the lot. Hopefully we will be able to watch some of the films on the big screen.
Gladiateur combatant
Because this is also personal, I will start with my winter swimming excursions – in particular one from last November. The Lichtspiel did a so called „Advent calendar“ and everybody could present a film of their choice. The water had a perfect 9.5 degrees that day. We showed two films on this particular window, one of them, the Gladiator film, we showed twice in a row, because we hold two slightly different prints of it.
Here are the full credits to this film
Gladiateur combattant. Etudes de gestes et d`attitudes, Pathé, France, 1911
(9.5mm number:242)
My own first encounter
My own first encounter with 9.5mm was at the AMIA conference in Los Angeles in the year 2000: the late William O’Farrell improvised a song on stage which still goes round in my head sometimes, „ah those beautiful 9.5“, and we saw the blow-up to 35mm of a Pathé Newsreel from 1928.
Over subsequent years I have seen many amateur films in this format, sometimes as projected originals and often on a 9.5mm visionneuse/viewer or an archival inspection bench prior to digitisation. I have also enjoyed browsing through the catalogues of Pathé from different years, and have been amazed at the number and variety of films that were available to the aficionados of the ‘cinema chez soi’.
26 | 04 | 26
24 | 04 | 26
22 | 04 | 26
19 | 04 | 26
18 | 04 | 26
15 | 04 | 26
*ANDREAS BERGER UND JOHANNES HARTMANN IM GESPRÄCH MIT MARCY GOLDBERG (*18.15h Kino Rex)
Talks: Filmgeschichte im Gespräch
mehr...14 | 04 | 26
12 | 04 | 26
09 | 04 | 26
05 | 04 | 26
01 | 04 | 26
CAMP DE THIAROYE
Ousmane Sembène, Thierno Faty Sow; Senegal, Armenien, Tunesien 1988, OV/e, 153', DCP
mehr...29 | 03 | 26
26 | 03 | 26
22 | 03 | 26
20 | 03 | 26
18 | 03 | 26
*GABRIELE SCHÄRER UND MISCHA HEDINGER IM GESPRÄCH MIT MARCY GOLDBERG (*18.15h)
Talks: Filmgeschichte im Dialog
mehr...18 | 03 | 26
15 | 03 | 26
13 | 03 | 26
12 | 03 | 26
11 | 03 | 26
QUEER-FEMINISTISCHES KURZFILMPROGRAMM
Kurzfilme von Josi Meyer, Stefan Jung, Sadie Benning und Ella Rocca
mehr...08 | 03 | 26
01 | 03 | 26
26 | 02 | 26
25 | 02 | 26
