Cinema Across Media: The 1920s 

2/19/11 to 2/25/11

Presented in conjunction with UC Berkeley's Department of Film and Media's interdisciplinary conference, Cinema Across Media will highlight the “multimedia” films of the 1920s, a time when cinema enlisted artists from many other fields such architecture, design, painting, music, and vaudeville.

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  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • Silent Comedies of the 1920s

    • Friday, February 25 7:00 PM

    Introduced by Paolo Cherchi Usai. Judith Rosenberg on Piano. This program features recently rediscovered and restored short comedies from the 1920s, including Pass the Gravy with Max Davidson and Should Men Walk Home? with Mabel Normand and Oliver Hardy, among others. (105 mins)

  • L'Inhumaine

    • Thursday, February 24 7:00 PM

    Introduced by Gertrud Koch. Judith Rosenberg on Piano. This rare French film, exploring love in the technological age, brings together many elements of 1920s Modernism: Fernand Léger's Cubist sets, Alberto Cavalcanti's Art Deco rooms, Claude Autant-Lara's stylized gardens, Paul Poiret's costumes, and ballet sequences choreographed by Rold de Maré. (132 mins)

  • Rien que les heures

    • Wednesday, February 23 7:30 PM

    Alberto Cavalcanti (France, 1926). Introduced by Anne Nesbet. Judith Rosenberg on Piano. Bringing a sociological perspective and avant-garde techniques to documentary film, Calvacanti shuns monuments and boulevards to focus on the Paris of the working class. Screened with two short films intended to promote the new architecture of the 1920s, Architecture d'aujourd'hui (1930), featuring the villas of Le Corbusier, and Hans Richter's Die Neue Wohnung (1930), commissioned by the Swiss Werkbund as “propaganda for the new dwelling.” (84 mins)

  • The Complete Metropolis

    • Saturday, February 19 6:00 PM

    Fritz Lang (Germany, 1926). Set in the year 2026, Lang's futuristic super-production is an anxiety dream of urban dystopia expressed as science fiction. This version incorporates over twenty-five minutes of recently rediscovered footage, lost since the film's 1929 premiere, putting into place subplots, characters, and events that had been mysteries for ages. (148 mins)