00:16A visit to Porta None is sort of unthinkable without coming to Peretone, one of the great
00:21chocolate establishments of this part of Italy. It's a perfect rest stop after a full day at
00:26Le Jornal de la Cinema Mota, the Porta None Silent Film Festival. I'm here today to talk about a program
00:33that I'm especially proud to be hosting and that is Spanish Cinema 1896 to 1919. Now I perhaps have
00:41used the word groundbreaking in the past. It is a word indeed that is overused but there's no
00:46hyperbole here when I explain that this is the first time that the 11 film archives in Spain
00:53have collaborated on researching and restoring all silent film that exists from Spain 1896
01:01to 1919. They've also involved other archives outside of the country. Why is this so important?
01:06And that's because of all of the West European countries the survival rate of film from this
01:11period is the lowest in Spain. Over 90% of all silent film is lost in this country. I'll give
01:18you
01:18another example. Catalunas was the most important studio in Spain in the silent era in the teens.
01:24Over 200 feature films were made. Of those only 38 are known to survive and only nine of those are
01:32considered complete. One of the reasons is the fragility of the studio system in Spain at the time.
01:37Also of course the fragility of the support of nitrate. There are also political problems,
01:42problems of war, politics. The end of the day the result is more than 90% has been lost. So
01:50the fact
01:51that these archives have collaborated for the first time and have chosen Legionata della Cina
01:56Mamuta, Pordenone, to be the the launching pad for this extraordinarily important series
02:02means the world to us. There will also be a DVD Blu-ray that's going to be released so you
02:08can see
02:09even more of these than the ones that you're going to be seeing in streaming today. We have three films
02:12for you. The first is a tram ride like similar to the ones that you've been seeing before. This I
02:17must admit is my favorite. It's going through Barcelona. It is an absolute delight. The joy that
02:23you see on the faces of the people who realize they're being filmed. That sense of movement through
02:29the city encapsulates that moment in early cinema when it was so new, it was so fresh. And again with
02:36that
02:36sense of movement, it's really a wonder to watch and the perfect introduction to the day's program.
02:43And certainly you'll be enjoying the accompaniment of Dan Vanden Hork. The second film is from 1916
02:48called Miss Ledia. And this is a fascinating film. It's a kind of hybrid. It's an amateur film that was
02:53made for a children's charity and it involved the bourgeoisie of La Toya, an island just off the coast of
03:03Spain
03:03in the province of Ponte Vedra. You'll see at the very beginning this absolutely gorgeous grand hotel.
03:09The film is a kind of, not quite a parody really. It's inspired by classic American serials.
03:15Clearly the people involved are having a great deal of fun. It almost has a sort of Ruritanian feel to
03:21it.
03:21But it does indeed have a professional cameraman, Jose Gil. The film was shot on 35, of course,
03:28but it's also tinted. So it feels very professional and yet it's clearly amateur performances and just
03:36a sense of playfulness. It's 20 minutes long and it's thanks to the Filmoteca de Galicia that we
03:41have this film both preserved and streaming today. The feature film we have today, Volontade Que Bénse,
03:49directed by Salvador Castello, all entirely shot in Barcelona, made in 1918 but not released until 1920.
03:55This too is a very happy survivor and it's thanks to a French distribution print that was found at the
04:00Cinémathèque Française. We're grateful to them for having restored this film so lovingly with beautiful
04:04tints as well. It's a film that stars Alba Tiberio, now a forgotten name, but at the time
04:10she came from a well-known circus family based in Trieste or she was born in Trieste not at all
04:15far
04:15from here. And there are also other family members of hers who are in the film forming part of a
04:20circus
04:21story. There's also a cross-dressing story. She performs as a man through much of the film which
04:26is great fun to see. Again, a very rare survivor from the Sans studio. This is the only known print
04:32of
04:33theirs to have known to have survived more or less intact. When the film was shot it was a moment
04:38in which the
04:38Spanish film industry felt very optimistic because after the end of the First World War they felt
04:43that they could fill a gap that had been left by the destruction around them. But of course, as happened
04:49with so many other European countries, the influx of American product, the push of the American studio
04:55system, partly collaborated to destroy what little had been happening in Spain. And so that brief moment of
05:03optimism was soon cut down. Again, they still made films, there were still some wonderful films, but
05:10given the horrendous number of percentage of loss that there is for Spanish film, any opportunity to
05:16see these films is a welcome one. As an accompanist we have Jose Maria Serral de Ruiz, who are very
05:22grateful for having recorded the scores for these three films. And do look out for the Blu-ray when it
05:28comes out. It's going to be a very rare opportunity to see so many Spanish films when they are so
05:34rare
05:34and so difficult in the past to be seen. So again, kudos to the 11 archives in Spain for getting
05:42together
05:43and working on this marvelous project.
