A two-reel adaptation of Dante Alighieri's Inferno from the Divine Comedy by Helios Film. It is less well-known than the five-reel feature produced the same year by Milano Films, but it was released earlier in 1911.
Social & External
The people behind it
Giuseppe Berardi
Dante
Armando Novi
Virgil
An Englishman, is travelling to Australia on a ship. He is falsely accused of murdering the ship's captain and arrested.
This 20th-century retelling of the classic fairy tale keeps all the familiar elements — a selfish step-sister, a put-upon beauty, a Prince Charming, and, of course, a lost slipper — but shifts the action to a contemporary boarding house. Cinderella, played by Mary Fuller, befriends an elderly resident, who buys a party outfit for her favorite when Cinderella’s elder sister preens for a dance. The new clothes transform the unassuming maiden into the toast of the ball. Finding Cinderella’s missing shoe, a dashing young man follows the clue to his grandmother, Cinderella’s friend at the boarding house, who works her magic to reunite the couple.
Anna is a poor girl who loves Erik, the son of a rich farmer. His parents are however determined to make Erik marry the rich Britta.
At the end of the middle ages, Ursula is accused of having poisoned her own husband. She claims she is innocent, but to prove it, she must submit to a ritual: trial by fire, walking on fire along a path leading directly to a crucifix. A film that has been much commended for the visual creativity shown by the director in successive blending in of images involving Ursula, her husband, the Virgin Mary, and Jesus Christ. Much applauded, also: the performance of Jenny Hasselqvist, thus described by French director René Clair: “We shall never forget her flaming eyes, the severity of her spirit, her abrupt and alarmed expressions, like an animal under threat.”
A film about the life of Molière (1622-1673).
Anna Moore, a poor orphaned country girl, and her little brother, Tommy, live with hypocritical Squire Simpson, who conspires with his son to acquire the inheritance due the girl.
She dances- The Dance of Death. She Sings- The song of Life. Scintillating, Fascinating, Desirable, Swifty She Weaves the Web of Destruction and then Regeneration. A Drama of Lights and Shadows.
German silent film
Four-generation story-saga dealing with the decline of a middle-class Lübeck family. The first adaptation of a Thomas Mann book was also Gerhard Lamprecht’s first major film.
A Japanese-set magic show. There is a lot of visual trickery on display, ending with an amazing effect using reverse footage and superimposing/projecting images on top of one another.
This is a mesmerising little short that employs a peculiar bird’s eye view of a mischievous devil who dances around, performing strange tricks and making sexy ladies appear out of nowhere. The colourful visual effects are very impressive for the time.
Various scenes from New Testament and Old: Christian martyrdom under Roman rule, Daniel in the lion's den, and Belshazzar's vision of a floating hand spelling the end of his rule.
This is another short, simple dance number. It’s quite stunning and unusual though with a bat turning into a woman who proceeds to give us a skirt dance before disappearing into thin air. The dance is mesmerising with the skirt stunningly changing colour throughout the film.
To satisfy her controlling mother and secure both of their futures, a daughter hesitantly enters a loveless marriage to a wealthy businessman. Years later, after she has uncovered and overcome her mother's deceptions and manipulations, her newfound happiness is threatened with the appearance of a mysterious "man from the sea."
A magician is surprised when he attempts to transform a beetle.
A gang of thieves lure a man out of his home so that they can rob it and threaten his wife and children. The family barricade themselves in an interior room, but the criminals are well-equipped for breaking in. When the father finds out what is happening, he must race against time to get back home.
A train-station telegraphist warns the next station of approaching bandits.
A Jewish slave girl falls in love with the Pharaoh's son during the Exodus.
Mark Sabre hires young Effie Bright to keep his snobbish, cold-hearted wife Mabel company while he goes off to war. When he returns home from the front wounded, he finds that Mabel has fired Effie, who shows up at Mark's door with her baby, having no place to go. Mark takes her in, but Mabel leaves him when the town shuns him for what they believe is going on with Mark and Effie. Matters are further complicated when Effie, driven to desperation, commits an unspeakable act that results in Mark having a nervous breakdown--and then things get worse.
A man comes to the beach with one goal: digging a hole. But what he finds beneath will shock him.
The true story of 20-year-old Colleen Stan, a hitchhiking woman abducted by a young couple and held captive for seven years, during which time she's tortured and forced to live as a slave to her captors.
Set in the storybook world of Enchancia, the music-filled movie follows Sofia, an average girl whose life suddenly changes when her mother marries the king and she is whisked off to live in a castle with her mom, new step-father, King Roland II, and step-siblings, Amber and James. Along the way this ordinary girl learns to navigate the extraordinary life of royalty, and in the process makes everyone around her feel special.
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
A mother and her teenage daughter must confront Death when it arrives in the form of an astonishing talking bird.
An animated short based on Hans Christian Andersen's tale about a poor young girl with a burning desire to find comfort and happiness in her life. Desperate to keep warm, the girl lights the matches she sells, and envisions a very different life for herself in the fiery flames filled with images of loving relatives, bountiful food, and a place to call home.
When seventeen-year-old Hannah stumbles upon a website about Thinspiration--an online community devoted to anorexia as a life choice--she becomes an obsessive follower of the site founder, ButterflyAna. By the time Hannah's family realizes what is happening and get Hannah the help she needs, the disease has fully taken hold and Hannah is refusing to eat. Will this family be able to exorcise the demon of anorexia from their lives?
In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.
A bureaucrat interviews five souls to decide which of them will be given a life on Earth. But he soon faces an existential challenge of his own.
Inspired by Chris Marker's iconic 1962 featurette La Jetée; the year is 2073—a not-so-distant dystopian future—and the setting is New San Francisco, the scorched-earth tech-dominant police state where democracy and personal freedom have been well and truly obliterated.
The legendary Roberto Duran and his equally legendary trainer Ray Arcel change each other's lives.
Romulus, a misunderstood musician turned recluse hiding from personal demons in a New York City cave, finds the frozen body of a young drifter in a tree. The authorities, including his police officer daughter, claim the death is accidental. Romulus is convinced the man was murdered by a prominent art photographer but how can he prove he's right when everyone thinks he's insane?
The year is 1955, and a great flood is coming to Northfork, Montana. A new hydroelectric dam is about to be installed in the mountains above the town, ready to submerge the valley in the name of progress. It is the responsibility of a six-man Evacuation Committee to relocate the townsfolk to higher ground. Most have duly departed, but a few stubborn stragglers remain – among them a priest caring for a sickly orphan, a boy whose fevered visions are leading him to believe he is a member of a roaming band of lost angels desperately searching for a way home.
On Christmas Eve, a fighter pilot on his way home becomes lost while flying over water and needs a miracle to land safely.
The enchanted story of Pinocchio.
Fanny Price is sent to live with her wealthy relatives, the Bertrams, where she is treated poorly by most except her cousin Edmund. Her life is complicated by the arrival of the worldly Mary and Henry Crawford
Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
A group of friends' fishing boat capsizes off the coast of Mexico and they're left alone stranded at sea and struggling for survival.
When human sailors are attacked by mysterious creatures of the deep, only one person can stop the war between land and sea: the Witcher, Geralt of Rivia.
Mal emerges from the shadows of a mystical forest onto a dark coastline where she crosses paths with Dizzy.
Conman Robert Freegard poses as an undercover MI5 agent and kidnaps countless victims amidst a high-stakes manhunt, until the woman who fell for him brings him to justice.