A celebration of motion pictures with no spoken dialogue returns to Bangkok for its sixth edition next month with five silent films.
This year’s Silent Film Festival opens May 24 at Scala Theatre with a peak example of the mountain-climbing thrillers that swept the world in the 1920s – Fight for the Matterhorn, a 1928 film based on acontest between English and Italian climbers to be the first to conquer the Matterhorn.
The next day will bring romantic drama 7th Heaven, which tells the story of a sewer cleaner who saves a woman’s life and leads the couple to love. The 1927 film won the first-ever Academy Award given for Janet Gaynor, as well as best director (Frank Borzage) and best writing (Benjamin Glazer).
The other films are Indian cinema classic Shiraz, a tearjerker romantic tale of the epic love that resulted in the Taj Mahal, the world’s greatest monument to love, and Filibus, an Italian adventure story in which a female sky pirate commands an airship in a cat-and-mouse with a great detective.
Fans of silent comedies might like Speedy, the last silent feature to feature silent-era superstar comedian Harold Lloyd in a film considered one of his best. Lloyd plays a baseball-crazed man who can’t keep a job yet decides to save New York’s last horse-drawn street car.
Subtitles for dialogue intertitles will be included in Thai. Tickets are available at Scala Theatre from THB120 to 160 each.
The Silent Film Festival, organized by the Thai Film Archive, runs May 24 through May 26 at Scala Theatre. The 50-year-old standalone cinema in the heart of Bangkok can be reached by foot from BTS Siam.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnIDGxKsCSY
FIND IT
May 24 – May 26, Scala Theatre
Rama I Road, Pathum Wan, Bangkok
BTS Siam
Reader Interactions