OCTOBER 3, 2021 @ 12:15pm (Eastern) FILM FORUM CELEBRATES NATIONAL SILENT MOVIE DAY WITH A 35MM RESTORATION OF SPEEDY & IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF SPEEDY

Introduced by Suzanne Lloyd (granddaughter of Harold Lloyd) and Bruce Goldstein

♪ Live Piano Accompaniment by Steve Sterner

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SPEEDY

(1928, Tim Wilde) Jazz Age Idols meet, as baseball-crazed soda jerk/cabbie Harold Lloyd and passenger Babe Ruth hurtle to old Yankee Stadium. Extensive NYC location work is highlighted during a frenzied finale, as Harold races Gotham’s last horse-drawn trolley right through Washington Square Arch! “No filmmaker had ever made such flamboyant use of New York.” – Kevin Brownlow.

Approx. 85 min. Archival 35mm print restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive. Courtesy Harold Lloyd Entertainment. Recommended for all ages!

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF SPEEDY

(2015, Bruce Goldstein) In this acclaimed 30-minute documentary, Bruce Goldstein, Film Forum’s Director of Repertory Programming, takes us on a tour of the NYC locations captured by Lloyd and his Hollywood crew for Speedy – many of them only steps away from Film Forum (along with vivid scenes shot in Coney Island, Midtown, Sutton Place, Yankee Stadium, etc.).

Edited and photographed by William Hohauser.

Approx. 30 mins. DCP. Courtesy The Criterion Collection.

SUZANNE LLOYD is the granddaughter of Harold and was raised by Lloyd and his wife Mildred Davis Lloyd (the comedian’s former leading lady) on their legendary Beverly Hills estate Greenacres. Following Lloyd’s death in 1971, 19-year-old Suzanne became the trustee of his film library, along with a collection of over 200,000 3-D photographs shot by Lloyd. Suzanne served on the Board of Trustees of the American Film Institute for over 20 years and has published three books. She lives in Los Angeles.

NATIONAL SILENT MOVIE DAY was launched by Chad Hunter, Executive Director of Video Trust and Director of the Pittsburgh Silent Film Society; Brandee B. Cox, a Senior Film Archivist at the Academy Film Archive; and Steven K. Hill, Associate Motion Picture Curator at the UCLA Film & Television Archive and aims to raise awareness about the urgency of preserving as many surviving silent films as possible.

SEPTEMBER 29, 2021 @ 6:40pm (Eastern) FILM FORUM CELEBRATES NATIONAL SILENT MOVIE DAY with Allan Dwan’s MANHANDLED!

Starring Gloria Swanson, Tom Moore, Lilyan Tashman, Ann Pennington, Frank Morgan

♪ Live Piano Accompaniment by Steve Sterner

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MANHANDLED

(1924, Allan Dwan) Gum-cracking department store shop assistant Gloria Swanson finds her chance impersonation of a Russian countess (parodying Swanson rival Pola Negri) is an entrée into Manhattan society, in the quintessential NYC working girl silent comedy, with a memorable subway rush hour crunch (filmed at Paramount Studios in Astoria). Featuring sultry siren Lilyan Tashman, a guest appearance by Ziegfeld Follies star Ann Pennington, and an early appearance by Frank Morgan, the future “Wizard of Oz.” Filmed at Paramount East Coast Studios, Astoria, Queens.

Approx. 65 min. Digital preservation courtesy Paramount Pictures.

NATIONAL SILENT MOVIE DAY was launched by Chad Hunter, Executive Director of Video Trust and Director of the Pittsburgh Silent Film Society; Brandee B. Cox, a Senior Film Archivist at the Academy Film Archive; and Steven K. Hill, Associate Motion Picture Curator at the UCLA Film & Television Archive and aims to raise awareness about the urgency of preserving as many surviving silent films as possible.

SEPTEMBER 29, 2021 @ 7:30pm (Eastern) (Giovanni Pastrone, Italy 1914, 148 min., 35mm). Lavish and grand in scale, this Roman epic is one of the first feature films produced and, according to Martin Scorsese, deserves credit for many of the innovations attributed to directors Cecil B. DeMille and D. W. Griffith. During the Second Punic War, Cabiria is a young girl who, after surviving the eruption of Mt. Etna, is sold into slavery to be sacrificed the great god Moloch. In Carthage, Cabiria befriends Fulvius and the strongman Maciste, who must disguise themselves to escape from the city while avoiding Hannibal’s march across the alps and the Roman siege of Syracuse. A spectacle for the ages, Cabiria is the first popular film to use a tracking shot, referred to for years after as a “Cabiria shot.”

National Silent Movie Day was organized to celebrate the art of silent pictures around the world and will be held every year on September 29. Join us for our inaugural screening!

Ticket info at: https://www.eastman.org/event/cabiria.

SEPTEMBER 23 @ 7:00pm (Eastern) A masterpiece of Chinese cinema’s silent era, this heart-wrenching tale of a single mother who works as a prostitute so she can afford an education for her young son stars legendary actress Ruan Lingyu, who tragically died by suicide at the age of 24.

“Key Second Generation director Wu Yonggang brings both an unsparing eye and a gentle humanism to this exceptional film, never flinching from the realities and consequences of the heroine's work but never judging her for resorting to what was (and is) a relatively normal profession. But Ruan's luminous performance and presence is the true crux of the film: scholars Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar consider her character in The Goddess, ‘a remarkable condensation in one figure of different aspects of the times,’ including Confucian family devotion, gender, national identity, the new complexities of capitalism, and Ruan's own scandalous off-screen image (as brilliantly depicted in Stanley Kwan's 1992 Ruan biopic Center Stage).” (UCLA Film & Television Archive)

[Center Stage, starring Maggie Cheung as Ruan Lingyu, will be shown on October 28 & 31.]

In The Goddess, director “Yonggong’s juxtaposition of Shanghai’s glitzy, Art Deco skyline with a portrait of wretched street-level existence highlights the disparities suffered by the masses during a time of foreign occupation and domestic unrest.” (Museum of Modern Art)

The Performers

The film will be accompanied live by Min Xiao-Fen, a virtuoso on the Chinese stringed instrument pipa, and guitarist Rez Abbasi. “The music [Min Xiao-Fen] has written draws from across the spectrum of Chinese heritage, including references to Tibetan chants as well as other folk forms, while remaining in contact with her jazz influences.” (NY Times)

Few artists have done more to both honor and reinvent the 2000-year history of the pipa, a Chinese lute, than renowned soloist, vocalist and composer Min Xiao-Fen. She uses her classical training in the instrument as a foundation to explore new sounds, traversing the worlds of jazz, experimental, and new music. She is known for her interpretation of the music of Thelonious Monk in her album Mao, Monk and Me, and has collaborated with John Zorn, Wadada Leo Smith, and Björk, among others.

Joining her is the equally versatile and adventurous guitarist Rez Abbasi, who creates dialogues between jazz and South Asian traditions. Abbasi was voted #1 Rising-Star Guitarist in the 2013 DownBeat Critics Poll and subsequently recognized as a “Top-Ten Guitarist,” alongside luminaries Bill Frisell and Pat Metheny. Abassi has recorded with many jazz greats. He became a Guggenheim Fellow in 2021.

The two musicians’ collaboration on The Goddess was recently released on the album White Lotus, which will be available for sale at the screening, and were interviewed on NPR’s Weekend Edition. You can listen to that interview here.

Cosponsored with the Cornell Council for the Arts, the Dept of Performing & Media Arts (PMA), the Dept of Music, the East Asia Program, Asian Studies and the Wharton Studio Museum.

Please note: we will be screening a digital, 82-minute version of the film from the China Film Archive.

Shown as part of, but in advance of, the inaugural National Silent Movie Day (September 29), dedicated to celebrating, preserving, and creating access to silent movies. For more info, visit nationalsilentmovieday.org.

website: www.cinema.ucla.edu/events/2013-10-26/goddess-china-1934-new-women-china-1935

with English language intertitles