TSFF 2013

Every year, the Toronto Silent Film Festival screens some of the world's finest silent films. And every year we pair them with music, improvised and played live by accomplished artists. A bond is created: between performers onscreen, performers in-person, and you. These are once-in-a-lifetime events, never to be duplicated.

The films screened at the Toronto Silent Film Festival are part of cinema history—a history that stretches from the late-19 th Century to the present. A history that continues to be written.

See for yourself.

In recent years, landmark silent films like Metropolis, Wings, and Napoleon, have been restored, re-scored and presented as the marquee-worthy masterpieces they still are, drawing mainstream media attention around the world. Films thought lost continue to be found, allowing us a more complete glimpse of our past, both real and imagined. Silent films influenced the opening sequences of Wall-E and Up, and they appear throughout Martin Scorsese’s Hugo.

Best of all, new silent feature films are being made. Everyone knows that, thanks to Michel Hazanavicius, director of The Artist—last year’s Academy Award winner for Best Picture.

"It’s the purest form of movie-making," said Hazanavicius of silent film. His colleague, Spanish director Pablo Berger, might agree. Berger’s new silent feature, Blancanieves, is already an award-winner too.

Whenever people gather in darkened theatres to watch movies, something magical happens. But only silent film brings the past and the present—the cinematic and theatrical—together on one night. Be part of the Toronto Silent Film Festival and discover that sense of wonder again. As George Pearson, pioneering British director, so aptly put it:

"No matter the heights to which the sound film might grow, the silent film would remain its living and sustaining root."