With springtime upon us again, Silents, Please! STL, a local film series committed to promoting and preserving the art of silent filmmaking from the early 20th century, is (quietly) ringing in the season with their Magical Springtime Shorts and Other Oddities program at the Arkadin Cinema and Bar.
The Magical Springtime Shorts is the latest program from Silents, Please! STL, which started screening silent films at the Arkadin Cinema and Bar in 2021. Kate Stewart, Director of Silents, Please! STL, rediscovered her passion for watching silent films during the initial lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Inspired by a lack of local silent film screenings, Stewart reached out to Sarah Baraba and Keith Watson, the co-owners of Arkadin, who were enthusiastic about the idea of showing more silent films. Since fall 2021, Stewart has programmed a number of films on the Arkadin Backlot, including Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman, F. W. Murnau’s Sunrise, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger, and Paul Leni’s The Man Who Laughs. “We’re not even one year in, but we’ve been getting really good responses and enthusiasm and we just keep growing,” Stewart says.
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Stewart was initially inspired to put together the Magical Springtime Shorts and Other Oddities program after watching Wladyslaw Starewicz’s 1925 short, Voice of the Nightingale. While she was moved by the film’s magical, dreamlike qualities, Stewart also realized that she would need more than just a 13-minute film to fill out the program.
This led Stewart to seek out early 20th-century shorts from around the globe that focus on the themes of springtime and transformation, pulling work from many film pioneers, such as the Lumiere Brothers, George Melies, Alice Guy-Blache, Lotte Reiniger, Hal Roach, and Giovanni Vitrotti. “What’s really cool is that you get to see filmmaking at its earliest, where they’re still trying to figure out what they can do with the medium, so a lot of it feels very experimental,” Stewart says. Among these dreamy, springtime shorts, Stewart is also including the earliest known adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, from 1910, for which all documentation, outside of the production company’s name, has been lost.
Preservation, specifically preserving the experience of watching silent films with an audience, is at the heart of Silents, Please! STL’s mission. Stewart even notes that if someone who has never seen a silent film before reaches out and wants to attend, she will let them in for free. “What gives me the most joy is seeing other people experience something engaging with this art form,” Stewart says. “That’s why I do it.”
The Magical Springtime Shorts and Other Oddities program will be screening at the Arkadin Cinema and Bar on April 13 at 8 p.m. For more information about upcoming screenings from Silents, Please! STL, please visit their website and Facebook page.
