Toronto Silent Film Festival

April 6 - 15, 2010

5 feature films, 8 short films - live musical interpretation

Movies for your eyes and ears

Toronto Silent Film Festival 2010

This may be year one for this festival but the TSFF really started on Monday August 31st 1896. For it was on that day that the first public screening of a miraculous moving shadow occurred in Toronto at the now long gone Robinson's Theatre Musee on Yonge St. near King.
The next 115 years would witness many changes to the city and to the movies but one thing remains the same. When people gather in a darkened theatre to watch movies, something magical happens.
In those early years, men and women filmmakers were alchemists, forging a vast group of films out of pure imagination, creativity and joy-all of which were captured on celluloid and shared with an audience.
Those films and their creators became the mentors to all that came after-right down to the technology driven films of today.
During this festival we can once again sit in a darkened theatre, some of which are original silent houses, and something magical still happens up on the big screen.
It's hard to describe the wonder of silent films, because to do that, you need words. And as the greats of the Silent Era remind us, talk is cheap: their faces say more than the finest author ever could, and to this day, their power pulses from the screen.
For five nights, the Toronto Silent Film Festival returns you to a time when images truly spoke-on the big screen, as they were meant to be seen, and with live accompaniment, as they were meant to be heard. Join us for the sights and sounds of cinema's original classics.





Toronto SILENT FILM Festival
Produced by Shirley Hughes

SILENT-ERA PRESERVATION

Over 80% have vanished. For what remains, much dedication, money, talent and expertise goes into preserving them and hopefully restoring them to close to their original glory. By showing them to the public, we complete the circle and they live again.



Featured Musicians
William O'Meara
Laura Silberberg
Andrei Streliaev
Richard Underhill and Astrogroove
Clark Wilson