Movie Marathon: Silent Classics: Celebrating a Centennial

• Event Date: Saturday, May 21, 2011
• Time: 10:30 am (CDT)
• Location: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL
• Cost: Free Admission

• Film

Silent Classics: Celebrating a Centennial
The Kiss (William Helse, 1896, 35 seconds, no rating)
The Great Train Robbery (Edwin Porter, 1903, 12 minutes, no rating)
The Little Train Robbery (Edwin Porter, 1905, 12 minutes, no rating)
Broken Blossoms (D.W. Griffith, 1922, 90 minutes, no rating)
Introduced by Richard Leskosky.

Information: The Kiss
Billie Bikes does it with the Widow Jones for 35 seconds. Scandalous behavior for 1896!

Information: The Great Train Robbery
Director Edwin S. Porter made film history when he completed the 13 sequences for the 12-minute The Great Train Robbery, released in 1903 but based on an 1896 story by Scott Marble. Featuring the first parallel development of separate, simultaneous scenes, and the first close-up (of an outlaw firing off a shot right at the audience), The Great Train Robbery is among the earliest narrative films with a "Western" setting. Source: AllMovie

Information: The Little Train Robbery
Two years after releasing The Great Train Robbery, Edwin Porter directed its parody, The Little Train Robbery. In this version, a group of children hold up a miniature train before being brought to justice.

Information: Broken Blossoms
Starring Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, and Donald Crisp, this film is a moving tale of racism and poverty. Buddhist missionary Cheng Huan has come from China to the run-down Limehouse District of London. Here, he has fallen in love with Lucy Burrows, who is regularly beaten by her boxer father, Battling Burrows. When Battling finds out about Cheng Huan’s feelings, the results are tragic.

Movie poster door prizes will be given away at each film session.