11th Silent Film Festival

11TH SILENT FILM FESTIVAL IN KRAKOW WOMEN'S CINEMA
DECEMBER 10-13, 2009

Krakow Silent Film Festival, one of the first of the kind, is organized by an art-house cinema Pod Baranami.

Each edition of the Festival is dedicated to a particular theme. This year we give priority to women from both sides of the camera - actresses and directors. The Festival presents: a collection of experimental films by Maya Deren - called the mother of American avant-garde, pioneer works by famed surrealist French director Germaine Dulac or The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the oldest surviving animated feature-length film by the German animator Lotte Reiniger.

We pay homage to great divas of the silent screen: Pola Negri, Greta Garbo, Lillian Gish and Louise Brooks as well as we present heroines of Alfred Hitchcock (Blackmail, 1929 - a breakthrough film, released both in sound and silent version), D.W. Griffith and Vsevolod Pudovkin.

Each film is accompanied by live music, performed mainly by musicians of Polish electronic and jazz scene.

GOLD PADLOCK prize 2009 goes to Professor Leslaw Lic, the most famous silent film pianist of Krakow and a long-time friend of Silent Film Festival. We wish to honor Professor Lic for his artistic achievements.


The festival is accompanied by an exhibition POLA NEGRI - A CINEMA LEGEND, prepared in cooperation with the Film Museum in Lodz.

Pola Negri is undoubtedly the greatest film star of Polish descent to have conquered Hollywood. With her brilliant career, she paved the way to the 'dream factory' for other European stars. Pola Negri appeared in sixty-three pictures.

POLA NEGRI - A CINEMA LEGEND is a retrospective, biographical project, depicting the story of the life and artistic development of an
outstanding, international film star. Our intention is to familiarise the visitors with this once extremely popular actress, who began her career in the age of silent cinema, successfully continued it after the advent of talking pictures, and managed to conquer America, but who, in spite of her achievements, is largely unknown to the contemporary viewers.

The exhibition is accompanied by a documentary film directed by Mariusz Kotowski entitled Life is a dream in cinema (2006).

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