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Silent Classics
The first three decades of cinema gave us some of the greatest films ever made, which had to tell their stories purely visually, giving us countless unforgettable images.
Thanks to excellent preservation and restoration efforts, these films are now available to watch in pristine condition, often with new scores by world renowned musicians.
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Biopic192780 minsDirector: Carl Th. Dreyer
An incontestable masterpiece of silent cinema, Carl Dreyer's deeply moving biopic features one of the most powerful performances ever captured on film.
Metropolis
Science Fiction1927150 minsDirector: Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang’s expressionist, dystopian vision is one of the first science fiction feature films, and is arguably the most influential.
Battleship Potemkin
Historical drama192569 minsDirector: Sergei M. Eisenstein
A fixture in the critical canon almost since its premiere, Eisenstein’s film about a 1905 naval mutiny was revolutionary in both form and content.
Decasia
Documentary200267 minsDirector: Bill Morrison
Decasia is an artful collage of found archival footage, shot pre-1950 on a cellulose nitrate base and most of it in advanced stages of decay.
London Symphony
Documentary201772 minsDirector: Alex Barrett
A poetic journey through the capital, presenting an artistic snapshot of London as it stands today, and a celebration of its rich diversity of culture, architecture and religion.
Blancanieves
Drama2011105 minsDirector: Pablo Berger
Pablo Berger’s imaginative black-and-white ‘silent’ movie relocates the story of Snow White to 1920s Spain – complete with bullfighting dwarfs
Un Chien Andalou
Animation & Artists Moving Image192816 minsDirector: Luis Buñuel
A scabrous study of desire, the subconscious and anti-clericalism - Buñuel and Dalí’s provocative first film is a classic of Surrealist cinema.
The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
Period drama192591 minsDirector: Rupert Julian
'Man of a thousand faces' Lon Chaney stars in the first version of Gaston Leroux's oft-filmed novel.
Nosferatu
Horror192289 minsDirector: F.W. Murnau
This influential Dracula adaptation contains some of the most famous images of expressionist film, with a new score by Hammer composer James Bernard.
Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
Crime192691 minsDirector: Alfred Hitchcock
Ivor Novello plays a strange lodger who may be behind a number of Jack the Ripper-style killings in Alfred Hitchcock’s silent thriller.
Downhill
Drama1927105 minsDirector: Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock’s fifth film features an early variation on his fabled ‘wrong man’plot, as Ivor Novello stands accused of getting a girl pregnant.
The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands
War1927106 minsDirector: Walter Summers
This dramatic reconstruction of two decisive naval battles from the First World War is one of the finest films of the British silent era.
The Birth of a Nation
Historical drama1915191 minsDirector: D.W. Griffith
D W Griffith's highly controversial, yet extremely significant American silent epic about the American Civil War and its aftermath.
The Master of the House
Drama1925107 minsDirector: Carl Th. Dreyer
Carl Theodor Dreyer’s richly detailed tragicomedy of domestic manners is by turns funny, intensely emotional and deeply affecting.
Turksib
Documentary192975 minsDirector: Viktor Turin
With bold and exhilarating flair, Turksib charts the monumental efforts to build a railway linking the regions of Turkestan and Siberia in 1920s USSR.
Shiraz: A Romance of India
Historical drama1928106 minsDirector: Franz Osten
This epic silent film, telling the ravishing, romantic story behind the Taj Mahal, has been newly restored with a sumptuous new score from Anoushka Shankar.
A Cottage on Dartmoor
Drama193088 minsDirector: Anthony Asquith
Anthony Asquith (Underground) directs this embroiled melodrama, a tale of love and revenge, shot on location on the bleak landscape of Dartmoor.
Underground
Romance192893 minsDirector: Anthony Asquith
The BFI National Archive restoration of one of Anthony Asquith's finest silent films set in London's Underground, with a new score.