Saturday, January 24, 2009

Europa Film Treasures

Emily Rems points us towards this compulsively-watchable site- Europa Film Treasures. The site aims at preserving and exhibiting some of the great silent films and shorts created around the world, and now stored in prestigious archives, in the interest of celebrating our collective cultural patrimony. Cultural patrimony is one of those buzzwords in Europe- I've no idea why it isn't in North America.

The films are remarkably entertaining. For instance, this 1907 Italian short is just beautiful; watch it in full-screen. Here's a 1937 French art deco cartoon that looks like what GE must dream at night. This 1948 American film of a nearly-nude woman reclining and drinking a coke is like surreal subliminal advertising by David Lynch. Here's a 1907 French short that shows the clever 'special effects' of the era. Here, you sense the ''wonder'' of early cinema that people talk about.

Anyway, you get the idea- one could watch this stuff all day.

2 comments:

irasocol said...

I especially loved the French Modernist Cinderella. Girls, Electricity, Trains, what more could you want?

Rufus said...

Yeah, Claire and I really enjoyed that one. If you get a chance, there are also some great animated films on there by George Pal, which we also loved.