Presentations and screenings
 

Presentation 1
Thrills, stunts and daredevils: express train action

Hemma M. Prainsack (Film historian)

The key element of the action film is the chase, which keeps the audience on the edge of their seats with nerve-racking staging. In early action films, the depiction of breakneck speed and modern transport methods became symbolic of the mastery of technology—and the body. When the first pictures of the Cinématographe Lumière rolled across the screen, ‘L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat’ stirred the audience’s emotions in particular. With the arrival of the train, the greatest means of transport in the country was filmed in motion, and continues to captivate people to this day. The railway quickly became a powerful subject in films and a setting for acrobatics and action on trains. In ‘Abenteuer im Nachtexpress’ (D 1925), the German action hero Harry Piel dares to take on the “giant of the primeval world” (Illustrierter Film-Kurier No. 361, 1925) with spectacular stunts.

Presentation 2
Submerged action: underwater filming technologies of the silent era, as represented in the collection of the San Francisco Film Preserve

Kathy Rose O’Regan (San Francisco Film Preserve)

Underwater filming was surprisingly prolific during the early decades of cinema. In the collection of the San Francisco Film Preserve alone, two features—Maurice Tourneur’s ‘The White Heather’ (1919) and Irvin Willat’s ‘Below the Surface’ (1920)—feature underwater sequences, including sunken wrecks and fights on the seafloor. This presentation will use these two films to explore advances made in underwater filming during the silent era. We will also discuss the innovative marketing techniques used by studios to tell the general public about these groundbreaking technologies.

Film
›Escalada à Torre dos Clérigos‹
P 1917, Raul de Caldevilla, 9 min, stumm

Introduction: Joana de Sousa (Cinemateca Portuguesa)

In 1917, the Torre dos Clérigos in Porto (to this day, the highest church tower in Portugal at 75 meters) set the stage for a remarkable feat: two Spanish acrobats successfully climbed the tower in front of a massive crowd that had gathered to witness the event. This film records their daring stunt, which was part of an advertising campaign for a biscuit manufacturer. The climbers were meant to enjoy tea and biscuits at the top of the tower, in what was advertised as “Tea in the Clouds!”. For decades, it was the most innovative Portuguese promotional film experiment.

Presentations and introduction in English