Pssst! Silent Film Festival is one of the smaller film festivals in Zagreb, but what it lacks in size it compensates with substance. Pulling most films out of the National Film Archives, it gives the audiences a chance to see early and often forgotten masters of the art form at their best or, in this case, scariest, with live music acts accompanying screenings.
This year the festival explores fear and anxiety, alter-egos, evils within ourselves and how the early films approached psychoanalysis of those phenomenons. Pssst! opens on November 5th in Center for Culture Tresnjevka with screenings of Luis Feuillade‘s Vampires, a famous French cult film crime series that celebrates its 100 year anniversary this year, followed by Alexandre Volkoff‘s House of Secrets (1923), a soup opera like episodic films in style of ciné-romans.
The second day starts with a screening of the first Wizard of Oz from 1925 starring young Oliver Hardy as the Tin Woodman. The film is much more bizarre than its more famous version from 1939. Tod Browning‘s Unknown (1927) will be screened afterwords. Browning is more known for his Freaks and the original Dracula. The film was considered lost until 1967 due to it being held in the archives among hundreds of films rolls labeled as, well, ‘unknown’.
Final day of the festival brings Stellan Rye‘s The Student of Prague (1913), viewed as a predecessor of avant-garde and expressionism films and considered to be the first independent film in cinema history. G. W. Pabst‘s Secrets of a Soul (1926) with Werner Krauss is the final film shown on the festival.
All films are accompanied by live music acts performed by maestro Vitomir Ivanjek on piano, bands Sunrise Sessions and Light Work.
Pssst! Silent Film Festival is held in CeKaTe (Center for Culture Tresnjevka), Stara Tresnjevka park 1 from November 5th to 7th with screening at 5pm, 7pm and 9pm every day.
