Preceded by shorts:The Adventures of Dollie (D. W. Griffith, U.S., 1908). Griffith's first film as a director. Preserved from the paper print. (c. 10 mins, Silent, B&W, 35mm) Neighbors (Eddie Cline, U.S., 1920). The best surviving 35mm print of this early Buster Keaton masterpiece. Preserved from original nitrate print.(c. 20 mins, Silent, B&W, 35mm) A Sleepless Night (Charles Bowers, U.S., date unknown (1933-41)). Discover the joy of Charley Bowers's slapstick surrealism in this rare puppet animation. Leonard Maltin calls Bowers "technically dazzling and hilarious at the same time...an unsung hero in the history of film." Preserved from original nitrate print. (c. 12 mins, B&W, 35mm, Courtesy LC)The Italian movingly contrasts the hopes an immigrant family places in America and the harsh reality of the Lower East Side slums. "It's a remarkable film," William K. Everson wrote. "It predates the naturalism of Greed by a decade, and the acting is both intense yet casual, with George Beban seeming to look 'past' the camera and ignore it. There's an incredible mobility to the camera...even, it seems, a hand-held camera at times to create a sense of spontaneous movement. The early scenes, set in Italy, were largely shot in Venice, California, while the slum scenes were done mainly in San Francisco because Los Angeles's own slums had not deteriorated sufficiently at that time to suggest New York!" As Patrick Loughney notes, "The Italian is an example of the 'social film,' a genre popular in the 1910s (that) addressed serious societal problems with a realism not seen again in American films until the late 1960s." Preserved from the original paper print copyright deposit.