A festival project - curated by Giuseppe Briffa

The Silent Image

Silent cinema isn't a museum piece - it's the root of everything: light, shadow, gesture, montage, a way of telling stories through images born before the word. The Silent Image brings titles and rarities from the silent era back to the big screen, restored in UHD 4K and paired with brand-new scores, weaving filmmakers, movements and eras together into single-film evenings or custom-built focuses.

One rule for every screening: watch in silence. Talking comes after.

In collaboration with Cantine Pupillo

Four nights, four eras of silent cinema

One film per night, restored in UHD 4K and scored live, at Contrada La Targia (Siracusa) — one screening for each of the festival's four months.

Three ways to listen to silent cinema

Mono

4K restoration with a live synth score.

Stereo

Synthesizers plus a musician or an actor, with live readings and tracks.

Dolby

Synthesizers, a musician and an actor all together: the most complete version.

Feature programs - single film

Six paths, six eras of silent film

Shadows, distorted geometry and expressionist sets: the German cinema of the 1920s that invented the visual language of modern horror.
- Metropolis — Fritz Lang2h30
- Faust — F.W. Murnau1h46
- Il Gabinetto del Dottor Caligari — Robert Wiene1h14
- Nosferatu — F.W. Murnau1h34
- Golem — Paul Wegener1h30
- Genuine — Robert Wiene1h27
- Fraulein Else — Paul Czinner1h25
- Orlak (Orlacs Hände) — Robert Wiene1h33
- Il Gabinetto delle Figure di Cera — Paul Leni1h25
- Una Donna sulla Luna — Fritz Lang2h40
- Phantom — F.W. Murnau1h25
- Pandora's Box — G.W. Pabst2h03
- Vanina — Arthur von Gerlach1h40
- L'Uomo che Ride — Paul Leni1h50
- Lo Studente di Praga — Stellan Rye1h25
- Destino (Der müde Tod) — Fritz Lang1h45
Extra
Dr. Mabuse — Parte I — Fritz Lang2h35
Dr. Mabuse — Parte II — Fritz Lang2h40
Nordic landscapes, livid light and moral tension: the icy rigor of Scandinavian silent cinema, from Sjöström to Dreyer.
- Giovanna d'Arco — Carl T. Dreyer1h34
- Pagine dal Libro di Satana — Carl T. Dreyer1h50
- Il Carretto Fantasma — Victor Sjöström1h47
- La Lettera Scarlatta — Victor Sjöström1h37
- Häxan — Benjamin Christensen1h45
Slapstick, melodrama and Hollywood's first monsters: the American roots of silent cinema, between laughter and tension.
- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde — John S. Robertson1h20
- Il Fantasma dell'Opera — Rupert Julian1h33
- La Pena — Wallace Worsley1h30
- Il Trio Infernale — Tod Browning1h26
Extra
Greed — Erich von Stroheim2h20
Nascita di una Nazione — D.W. Griffith3h13
An oblique gaze on the image, between the benshi tradition and experimentation: Japanese silent cinema and its unique visual grammar.
- A Page of Madness — Teinosuke Kinugasa1h10
Divas, epics and experimentation: Italian silent cinema between D'Annunzio-style decadence, twilight poetry, realism and futurist fury.
- L'Inferno — Bertolini, Padovan, De Liguoro1h10
- Pinocchio — Giulio Antamoro1h03
- Rapsodia Satanica — Nino Oxilia50 min
- La Presa di Roma — Filoteo Alberini10 min
- Cenere — Febo Mari1h34
- Thaïs — Anton Giulio Bragaglia35 min
Extra
Cabiria — Giovanni Pastrone3h20
Montage as a political weapon: the Soviet cinema that rewrote the rules of film language.
- La Corazzata Potëmkin — Sergej Eisenstein1h14
- La Madre — Vsevolod Pudovkin1h27
- L'Uomo con la Macchina da Presa — Dziga Vertov1h08
- Mix Soviet Era — selezione del team1h
- Mix Proto-Soviet Era — selezione del team1h

Tap a category to see the full list of titles.

Thematic focuses

On the movements

Surrealism, dadaism and pure cinema: the avant-gardes that turned film into an artistic manifesto.
- Un Cane Andaluso — Luis Buñuel16 min
- Brumes d'Automne — Dimitri Kirsanoff12 min
- Le Follie del Dottor Tube — Abel Gance13 min
- Lo Specchio a Tre Facce — Jean Epstein39 min
- Filmstudie — Hans Richter7 min
- Two Pence Magic — Hans Richter6 min
- Ghosts Before Breakfast — Hans Richter6 min
- Inflation — Hans Richter3 min
- Jeux des Reflets et de la Vitesse — Henri Chomette5 min
Medium-length films
La Caduta della Casa Usher — Jean Epstein1h06
Ménilmontant — Dimitri Kirsanoff38 min
Il Sangue di un Poeta — Jean Cocteau55 min
La Conchiglia e l'Ecclesiastico — Germaine Dulac40 min
In the Middle of the Night
On film noir
The silent roots of noir: long shadows, guilt and moral ambiguity before the term even existed.
The Birth of Cinema
The origins of cinema
From the Lumière brothers to Méliès: the very first experiments that invented cinema as we know it.
Hurt in Silence
A cross-movement mix
A cross-cutting journey through pain and the wound as image, across different eras and movements of the silent era.
Porno-Teo-Horror
On the most extreme themes
Body, the sacred and transgression: a deep dive into the most extreme and scandalous silent films of their time.
Sweet Dreams
On dream cinema, between dreams and nightmares
Dreams as cinematic language: oneiric imagery, nightmares and visions on the edge of waking life.

Tap a category to see the full list of titles.

Special - by filmmaker or movement

The Cinema Of

A collage of images and suggestions from a single filmmaker's work, read and scored live in the Stereo format. The cycle grows month by month, one filmmaker at a time.

David Lynch
Stanley Kubrick
David Cronenberg
Wong Kar-wai
John Carpenter
Andrei Tarkovsky
Ingmar Bergman
Robert Eggers
Robert Wiene
Fritz Lang
Ken Russell

More filmmakers to be announced between September and December.

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