A Saturday morning walk in Pordenone

Card of the 32d Pordenone Silent Film Festival. Image: Margit Manstad and Eric Laurent in Rågens rike [The Kingdom of Rye] (Ivar Johansson, 1929). Graphic processing by Giulio Calderini and Carmen Marchese. Photograph Credits: Svenska Filminstitutet, Stockholm / Le Giornate del Cinema Muto.

Margit Manstad and Eric Laurent in the happy ending of Rågens rike / [The Kingdom of Rye] are the cover stars of this year's Pordenone catalogue.

Anny Ondra, the Czech actress, is on this year's Pordenone poster. We know her as the first great Hitchcock blonde in The Manxman and Blackmail, and now we'll see some of her Czech work.

During my morning walk I enjoyed a breath of cool mountain air from the Dolomites. At the railway station's newsstand they already knew to expect me and remembered the selection by heart: The New York Herald Tribune and Le Monde in glorious broadsheet. To be consumed, of course, at Bar alla Posta, opposite Teatro Verdi.

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto has always been a feast of friends, and somehow those friendships got closer during the Sacile diaspora. We have little time for anything else, so we remain strangers and tourists in Pordenone, but I have learned increasingly to appreciate the Pordenone quality of life, the sense of community, the innate taste and distinction. An expression of that is my favourite show, "Striking a New Note", where the schoolchildren of Cordenons and Pordenone play to silent comedies.

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