402: F is For Fake

Archival Spaces 402:  Film Preservation Hoaxes Uploaded 28 June 2026 Recently, a story circulated on the net that a film archivist at the Carnegie Library in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Rebecca Lang, had found an unlabeled film canister in the basement, which turned out to be a previously unknown silent film from 1923 with Buster Keaton.Continue reading “402: F is For Fake”

397:  German Film Exile in Argentina

Archival Spaces 397: Eternal Mask’s Art Director Uploaded 17 April 2026 I have been catching up on the films of Werner Hochbaum on YouTube, a filmmaker best known for his leftist feature, Brothers (1929), about a dock strike in Hamburg. Politically in danger after 1933, Hochbaum moved to  Austria, where he directed several films, includingContinue reading “397:  German Film Exile in Argentina”

395:  Far From the Revolution

Archival Spaces 395 White Russians in Hollywood Uploaded 20 March 2026 A still photograph from Joseph von Sternberg’s The Last Command (1928) perfectly captures the mixture of reality and fantasy, of historical truth and aesthetic expression that is so much a part of Hollywood cinema and its White Russian colony: Standing in a World WarContinue reading “395:  Far From the Revolution”

392:  Czech Silent Cinema

Archival Spaces 392 Czech Silent Film History Uploaded 6 February 2026 Back in Summer 2023 (Blog 326), I wrote about a Czech film playing at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, The Organist at St. Vitus Cathedral (1929), directed by Jan S. Kolár. It is an amazingly atmospheric melodrama, shot mostly in real locations aroundContinue reading “392:  Czech Silent Cinema”