10 January 2020
Pand P (Leenderweg 65, 5614 HL Eindhoven)
On day 2 of NSFF 2020 you’ll be able to experience a cinematic whirlwind, attend a lecture given by David Robinson, and watch a masterful French comedy. Pay attention when ordering your tickets: there are special ‘dagkaarten’ (day passes) available!
If you’re looking for a place to stay during the festival, The Student Hotel offers a 10% discount for all festival attendees! Between 8 and 13 January 2020, use the promo code SILENTFILM when you make your reservation.
4:00 PM
MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA
SU, 1929
66 minutes
Director: Dziga Vertov
Cast: Mikhail Kaufman
The Russian experimental silent film (during the Soviet era) MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA from 1929 isn’t actually a film. It’s a visual experience. Directed by Dziga Vertov and edited by his wife Elizaveta Svilova, this documentary (including also staged fragments) is a cinematic whirlwind, a masterclass in filmmaking. It took them three years to finish the film.
At the time the film was not well received at all. Colleague filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein even called it ‘pointless camera hooliganism’, but nowadays the film is considered one of the highlights in film history.
MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA will be musically accompanied LIVE by Meg Morley.
7:00 PM
LECTURE: ‘THE FORGOTTEN STAR’
David Robinson
Film historian en Chaplin biographer David Robinson holds a lecture about forgotten star Aimée Campton. This lecture is free to attend! Fragments of her ‘Maud films’ will be musically accompanied LIVE by Daan van den Hurk (piano).
‘Only one year ago, you would have searched in vain for any mention of the name of Aimée Campton in film history,’ Robinson writes. ‘Since then however, two films have surfaced to reveal the charm and wit which also gave her a brilliant two-decade starring career – now equally mysteriously forgotten – on the Paris stage.
‘Aimée was an English girl, born Emily Cager in Brighton in 1882, who became a dancer with The Tiller Girls – the world’s first precision dance troupe. The Tiller Girls appeared at the Folies Bergère in 1900, and Emily stood out for her personality, her singing, and her cute English accent. Within a year, now renamed Aimée Campton, she was a star, and the wife of France’s premier comedian Charles Prince (better known by his alter ego Rigadin). After this she regularly starred in her own shows. When she had time she would link up with the handsome actor René Hervil, to make an intermittent series of films featuring the character Maud. The films launced Hervil on a long and distinguished career as a director. The two Maud films that have surfaced in the past year are smart and sophisticated: the earliest, LES CHARMES DE MAUD (1912), fearlessly anticipates MeToo.
‘A new chauvinism overtook France at the end of the First World War, and Aimée, with her cute accent, was suddenly rejected. Forgotten, she found consolation in the arms of the new proprietor of the Folies Bergère, Paul Derval, with who she remained until her death in 1930.’
8:00 PM
LES DEUX TIMIDES
FR, 1928
77 minutes
Director: René Clair
Cast: Maurice de Féraudy, Pierre Batcheff, Véra Flory, Jim Gérald, Françoise Rosay
In the French comedy LES DEUX TIMIDES (English title: TWO TIMID SOULS) a man is accused of physically abusing his wife. He’s undoubtedly guilty, but receives the highest possible prison sentence because of his shy, nervous lawyer. After he’s released, he’s out for revenge. He takes it upon himself to seduce a woman who’s the lawyer’s object of affection – which is not too difficult, given the lawyer’s too ‘timid’ to ask her to marry him.
LES DEUX TIMIDES is light, sharp and elegant; trademarks of René Clair. He used to be one of the biggest French directors of his day, famous for THE PHANTOM OF THE MOULIN-ROUGE (1925) and his breakthrough film ENTR’ACTE (1924), among many others.
The film will be musically accompanied LIVE by Maud Nelissen (piano).