Gaston Méliès in Australia Arc cinema, Canberra, ACT 1pm, 5 October 2013 French film historian and documentary filmmaker Raphael Millet has long been chasing the mixed fortunes and legacy of Gaston Méliès, brother of cinema pioneer Georges Méliès. In Australia to research Gaston’s local filmmaking ...

Yes, Alf was born on 26 January 1885 in Richmond, Victoria.

Why did he shave so many years off his age? Didn't everybody, youth being a virtue in a youthful industry? The 27-year-old Snub Pollard lost five years off his true age in a 1916 press clipping.

The documentary was produced by Elaine Shepherd for BBC Productions. It featured interviews with Bow's daughter-in-law Jackie Bell Chavez, Oscar-winning costume designer for The Artist Mark Bridges, Kevin Brownlow, Diana Serra Cary, Leonard Maltin, biographer David Stenn and William Wellman Jr. as w...

BFI Southbank BFI London Film Festival 6pm, 10 October 2012 The first Oscar-winning film, a sweeping adventure story of doomed flyers in WW1, with never-bettered aerial sequences, directed by a young William Wellman. Director William A Wellman Producer Lucien Hubbard Screenwriter Hope Loring, Louis...

BFI Southbank BFI London Film Festival 6.30pm, 21 October 2012 Lavish, dashing, comic costume romp with popular silent star, Pola Negri, as a gypsy singer caught up in royal intrigue in the Spain of 1625. Director-Producer Herbert Brenon Screenwriter Beulah Marie Dix, June Mathis With Pola Negri, A...

BFI Southbank BFI London Film Festival 6.30pm, 16 October 2012 Lubitsch's “lost” silent epic, brilliantly restored by the German Federal Archive, with a towering performance by the great Emil Jannings. Director-Producer Ernst Lubitsch Screenwriter Norbert Falk, Hanns Kräly With Emil Jannings, Dagny...

BFI Southbank BFI London Film Festival 6pm, 17 October 2012 Heat Lightning Director Mervyn LeRoy With Aline MacMahon, Ann Dvorak, Preston Foster USA 1934 64 mins Jewel Robbery Director-Producer William Dieterle Screenwriter Bertram Bloch, Erwin S Gelsey With William Powell, Kay Francis, Helen Vinso...

BFI Southbank BFI London Film Festival 6.30pm, 13 October 2012 This long-neglected tale of a love triangle is regarded as Norway’s first authentic indigenous feature. Director-Producer-Screenwriter Rasmus Breistein With Aasta Nielsen, Einar Tveito, Lars Tvinde Norway 1920 74 mins Regarded as Norway...

BFI Southbank BFI London Film Festival 8.30pm, 20 October 2012 Light-hearted 1940s burlesque musical set in ancient Greece, based on Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, with irresistible evergreen songs by Rodgers and Hart. Director A Edward Sutherland Producer Jules Levey Screenwriter Charles Grayson,...

BFI Southbank BFI London Film Festival 4.15pm, 21 October 2012 Evocative images of tanks and trench warfare on the Somme in 1916, in this record of the British Army's winter campaign, restored with new music by the Imperial War Museum. Director Geoffrey H Malins Producer William F Jury. Camera Op J...

Empire Leicester Square BFI London Film Festival 8.30pm, 19 October 2012 World premiere of Hitchcock’s newly restored 1929 silent drama, which tells the story of two brothers who fall in love with the same girl. Set in a remote Isle of Man fishing community (but shot in Cornwall), Hitchcock’s penul...

Gymnasts, jazz and Pete the Pup - how American audiences first viewed Abel Gance's masterpiece ...

Daily Star, Queens, NY, 26 January 1929

Champagne (1928) 7.30pm, 27 Sep 2012 3.45pm, 30 Sep 2012 BFI Southbank, London Restoration premiere of a Hitchcock silent. Father-daughter tensions arise when a millionaire (Harker), suspecting his playgirl daughter's fiancé is a gold-digger, pretends the family fortune is gone. A bubbly comic para...

The Farmer’s Wife (1928) 3.20pm, 23 Sep 2012 BFI Southbank, London Restoration premiere of a Hitchcock silent. This time round, the tone's comic and it's a man - a morose widowed farmer - who's unsure about which of the local women he should select as his new wife. But again it's sexual passion (as...

Downhill (1927) 8.20pm, 20 Sep 2012 6.30pm, 24 Sep 2012 BFI Southbank, London Restoration premiere. Though a vehicle for Novello (besides starring, he also co-wrote the story), this melodrama about a public schoolboy taking the blame when his pal gets a girl pregnant and thereafter suffering expuls...

The Skin Game (1931) 8.20pm, 9 Sep 2012 6.20pm, 19 Sep 2012 BFI Southbank, London Another adaptation from the stage, this time of Galsworthy's account of the increasingly bitter, even vicious battle for land between an aristocratic family down to their last Rolls Royce and a nouveau riche industria...

Number Seventeen (1932) 4pm, 16 Sep 2012 8.40pm, 21 Sep 2012 BFI Southbank, London Assigned a creaky play about a tramp and a cop meeting over a corpse in a disused house, Hitch threw in whatever he could: Cockney comedy, proto-noir lighting effects, pre-39 Steps bondage for the hero and heroine, a...

Rich and Strange (1931) 8.45pm, 15 Sep 2012 6.10pm, 16 Sep 2012 6.20pm, 21 Sep 2012 BFI Southbank, London Just as issues of trust and mistrust between men and women often fuelled his thrillers, so they informed most of Hitchcock's comedies. In this wry, episodic cautionary tale of a suburban couple...

The Pleasure Garden (1926) 7.30pm, 13 Sep 2012 BFI Southbank, London From the opening scene of dancing girls at the titular theatre being ogled by a mostly male audience, sexual desire - and the trouble it may bring - drives the narrative of Hitchcock's first completed feature as director. A melodr...

Juno and the Paycock aka The Shame of Mary Boyle 6.10pm, 7 Sep 2012 6.20pm, 9 Sep 2012 6.20pm, 22 Sep 2012 BFI Southbank, London A faithful adaptation of Sean O'Casey's play about a Dublin family - headed by Juno (the ever dependable Allgood) and her terminally workshy husband (Chapman) - seeking a...

Elstree Calling 6.20pm, 5 Sep 2012 4pm, 9 Sep 2012 BFI Southbank, London After Blackmail, Hitchcock directed some sketch material for this revue compilation, supervised by Adrian Brunel and boasting some of Britain's top musical comedy artists of the day. Several dance sequences are in rather lovel...

Forbidden Territory 8.40pm, 26 Sept 2012 BFI Southbank, London Alma Reville co-wrote the script for this adventure melodrama based on a novel by Dennis Wheatley. Set in an oppressive, spy-hunting Soviet Russia, the film caused a stir at the House of Commons, being branded 'definitely anti-Russian' ...

Easy Virtue 6.20pm, 28 Sep 2012-07-31 BFI Southbank, London Premiere of a new restoration. As adapted by Eliot Stannard, who scripted most of Hitchcock's silent films, Noel Coward's play becomes a study of the corrosive effects of being judged guilty by society, even if - as in the case of Laurita ...

John Major – My Old Man, A Personal History of Music Hall 8pm, 27 September 2012 Soho Theatre, London Former British Prime Minister John Major’s upbringing was far from conventional, his father a comedian and singer. Tom Major’s career in music hall began when he was just 21 and John Major – author...

From Rover to Uggie: Dogs in the Movies 7.30pm, 22 November 2012 Cinema Museum, Lambeth, London Dog lover and film historian Keith Withall takes us on a trip through canine movie land, and along the way visits Rin Tin Tin, Asta, Lassie and other pooch stars. Woof! http://www.cinemamuseum.org.uk" ta...

Vintage Film Circle: Full Circle 7.30pm, 10 November 2012 Cinema Museum, Lambeth, London The VFC recreates the experience of one of its classic film shows of the 1960s/70s, with silent rarities including Tom Mix in The Big Diamond Robbery (1929), a Phlip & Phlop cartoon, and more! http://www.cinema...

Boris Karloff: More Than a Monster 7.30Pm, 10 October 2012 Cinema Museum, Lambeth, London Born 125 years ago, Karloff’s 1931 breakthrough role was “the Monster” in Frankenstein, one of over 150 movies. Biographer Stephen Jacobs + special guest Karloff’s daughter Sara reveal the gentleman behind the...

Fred Karno Company Centenary Celebrations 2pm, 29 September 2012 Cinema Museum, Lambeth, London “A. J.” Marriott presents an illustrated talk on the music hall artistes, including Chaplin and Laurel, who 100 years ago sailed to the US with impresario Fred Karno. Bookings: fredkarnocompany@aol.com" ...

Piano, Electronica: A Silent Film Evening 7.30pm, 20 September 2012 Cinema Museum, Lambeth, London Barbara De Biasi performs her new score for 1928 German rarity Tragödie im Zirkus Royal (Ghosts of the Night) + a programme of shorts. http://www.cinemamuseum.org.uk/topics/events/?event_type=current"...

The Astronomer’s Dream 3pm, 10 June 2012 Barbican Centre, London A presentation of experimental and animated early silent film with new electro-acoustic musical accompaniments by the Guildhall School of Music & Drama’s Electronic Music Studios. Linking with last year’s showing of A Trip to the Moon...