Tweet Where are you from?

I was checking out the profile of one of our new members and noticed the location listed as Estonia. Of course, we've got a lot of U.S residents, Canadians, one or two happily vocal Australians, at least one German off the top of my head.... sorry if I've let anyone out. That's what happens when I write on the fly in the morning.

I would be interested in hearing from some of the folks from further afield about the state of silent and classic movies in their homes and how they wound up here. Often the journey is more interesting than the destination, after all.

Bob

[Danny Burk]

Interesting question, Bob, but note that most "new members" are deleted shortly after joining. They're spammers, and many sign up every day with locations listed from Algeria to Fiji to Yemen. They aren't really from the places they list, of course; notice that they always speak Albanian... A few manage to make a post, but most join to get a link to their websites. Most are easy to pick out and don't last long...I just wiped out 3 or 4 when I signed on a little while ago.

Oh, well.

Bob

[silentfilm]

Danny is correct. I usually wipe out one or two a day also.

Somewhere in the world, probably in Asia and/or Eastern Europe, there are people who do nothing but sign up for message boards like this one and either spam them or just link them to websites for everything from prescription pills to knock-off watches. And they use random locations to try to make their accounts look genuine.

I believe that most members here are from the USA, Canada, and the UK, with a few from Western Europe and Australia.

From one of Mr Lipton's vocal Australians(I guess Brooksie is the other one). What about South Africa, what goes on over there, what have they made of interest over the decades? They do have an active radio network which hasn't saved too much & TV was very late getting there. I do correspond with a Scots lady who now lives there and runs a site on a husband & wife operetta team of the past, Anne Ziegler & Webster Booth who made a few films and lots or records. Even the forties character actor Cecil Kellaway came from there and came to Australia and made films before going to US & minor fame at least. His family stayed in Australia, I believe. The Singing Kid's(1936) Sybil Jason was also born there on the same day as my Mom was in Australia. There are lots of others like Sid James, Juliet Prowse & Basil Rathbone.

In the 1970s and a little beyond I corresponded with a jazz composer who was an ethnic Estonian(Russian bussing ideas meant a large percentage of these Baltic States were made up of ethnic Russians). Funnily, when I had a grocery store in inner Melbourne(end 1997 to Feb 2000) a guy, living in an accommodation home for the poor nearby, came in with a bunch of books he probably found outside a Salvation Army style store and wanted to trade them for cigs. One was a good condition Estonian-English & Reverse dictionary published in Estonia about 1939. I have it still it. The language is unique like Hungarian & Finnish can be called. I should note that this little guy looked very much like the character, Cyrano de Bergerac and that is no joke. An in-law relative had his brother in that home and in the same room by a coincidence.

Talking about Finland(Suomi) they made a lot of films and there are a good number of older films on DVD, all seemingly without subtitles, and hard to get. No Amazon sites there and they are reluctant to ship internationally. Thus, I gave up. Do better with Serbian or Czech material. There is a good film history there and reasonably priced films available, a few with English added audio or subtitles. I have some TV dubs from the 1930s somewhere, one a musical from about 1938-39. The Polish industry would be difficult but there is one in bits from about 1938 on You Tube. Some clips from that have English subtitles and seem to be from TV Polonia. Films, not Polish, have been found there in recent times. The collection of a deceased priest is one that has been noted. He died about 2004 & was a collector.

There is lots more out there & there must be interested collectors in those countries but if they have no English then there is a problem for them.

Hey hey!
I am not a spammer or anything like that! I really love movies! and I am from Paraguay (southamerica!)
It is very sad here, because I never actually met anyone here that likes silent films... not one single person. I feel lost...
thnxs God there`s internet!

I'm from New Zealand. I've just joined & have posted in the "Introduce Yourself" thread.

I'm real & I'll be reading through here for days & days - bliss! - & hope to post sometimes as well.

In fact I have asked a question already. I hope it can be answered.

[Danny Burk]

Welcome, Claire; glad to have you with us!

Just for the record, spammers have been greatly reduced, thanks to the new software. It's a lot more difficult for them to sign up now. We still get one or two ambitious spammers per week, who apparently have a lot of time on their hands to look up answers to our probing questionnaire, but nothing like the 15 or 20 that registered every day before.