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The Toll of the Sea, first Technicolor feature with colour prints The Toll of the Sea was premiered on 26 November 1922. It was the first two-colour Technicolor feature with colour prints produced for standard projectors.It was a Madama Butterfly story set near Hong Kong and featuring Anna May Wong, who was only 17 years old in her first leading role. A Chinese lady Lotus Flower rescues an American man…

American short comedy The Frozen North One hundred years ago today, the American short comedy The Frozen North (1922) was released. In the film, director and actor Buster Keaton parodied the western star, William S. Hart. Keaton played the role of a bully and thief who beats his wife. He imitated Hart’s unique screen image, which made many audiences associate Hart with the role in the film. Some think that…

The earliest surviving Chinese fiction film Labourer’s Love On June 9, the International Archives Day, at the China Film Archive in Beijing, and on June 27 at the Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, Italy, the 4K restored version of Labourer's Love (also known as Romance of a Fruit Peddler or Romance of a Fruit Pedlar), a Chinese film produced a hundred years ago in 1922. It is the earliest surviving…

World’s first feature length documentary First released on 11 June 1922 in New York, Nanook of the North is considered the world’s first feature length documentary. The film preserved the disappearing ethnographic culture of the Inuit indigenous community in Canada. Robert Flaherty, an American explorer and director of the film, was considered the Father of Documentary.Although the film is widely celebrated as a pioneering documentary, most of the sequences were…

Kino-Pravda Exactly 100 years ago, Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov, together with his future wife Elizaveta Svilova (they would marry in 1923) and his brother Mikhail Kaufman, started the newsreel series Kino-Pravda, named after Pravda, the main official newspaper in the Soviet Union. The first issue of the series was released in 1922 and subsequently 22 more until 1925. In spite of limited resources, the film provides a ground for Vertov’s…

The Original Movie en This month’s ‘Film 100 Years Ago’ introduces The Original Movie, an animated short released in April 1922. It is an episode in the animated series Tony Sarg's Almanac (1921–1923). Influenced by Chinese shadow puppetry and the silhouette style, The Original Movie is a satire about the production system of Hollywood, that caused the inability of writers to recognise their work when it reaches the screen. The…

NOSFERATU The masterpiece by legendary director F.W. Murnau (1888-1931), NOSFERATU (1922), celebrates the 100th Anniversary today. NOSFERATU brings the first ever vampire film on screen and defines gothic horror. With the compelling cinematography and terrific acting of Max Shreck, NOSFERATU continues to haunt us today.The Premiere was held on 4 March 1922 in the Marmorsaal (Marble Hall) of Berlin Zoological Garden. The event was planned as a large society evening…