11-15 September

Highlights

Below are just some of the films that we will be screening as part of the 20th British Silent Film Festival at the Phoenix in Leicester. We will post the final programme on the site once all films have been confirmed. More information to follow.

Comradeship (Maurice Elvey, UK, 1919)

One of the first British films made after the Armistice and the first produced by the Stoll Company. Comradeship covers the sweep of WWI on the home front and battlefield, on class relations, the role of women and the plight of wounded soldiers returning to civilian life. It was also one of the first films screen as part of the 1st BSFF in 1998. Starring Guy Newell, Gerald Ames and Lily Elsie. Introduced by Maurice Elvey expert Lucie Dutton.

Tell Me Tonight ( Anatole Litvak, UK/Ger, 1933)

An engaging musical comedy, starring Magda Schneider and Jan Kiepura, set in Switzerland and based around the popular song of the title. German star, Magda Schneider plays the local Mayor’s daughter and Kiepura , a famous Italian tenor who exchanges places with a fugitive in order to escape the limelight for a time.  Tell Me Tonight was a German co-production, this time filmed in UFA’s Babelsberg Studios and directed by the talented Anatole Litvak. An engaging musical comedy set in Switzerland and based around the popular song of the title. German star, Magda Schneider plays the local Mayor’s daughter and Kiepura , a famous Italian tenor who exchanges places with a fugitive in order to escape the limelight for a time. 

The Runaway Princess (Anthony Asquith and Fritz Wenhausen, UK/Ger, 1928)

A British –German co-production based on Elizabeth Russell’s 1905 riches-to-rags novel, Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight. Starring Mady Christians, Paul Cavanagh and Fred Rains . Christians stars as the lonely Ruritanian princess, betrothed to a man she has never met, who runs away to London with her professor (Rains) to escape her arranged marriage and meets the handsome detective sent in pursuit!