D. W. Griffith: Mr. Jones at the Ball (1908) 2020 digital restoration Film Preservation Society

D. W. Griffith: Mr. Jones at the Ball (US 1908).

MR. JONES AT THE BALL (US 1908) dir: D. W. Griffith. story: ?. photog: G. W. Bitzer. cast: John C. Cumpson, Florence Lawrence, Harry Solter, Mack Sennett, Arthur Johnson, George Gebhardt, Charles Inslee, Jeannie MacPherson. prod: American Mutoscope & Biograph Company. filmed: 23/24.09.1908 (NY Studio). rel: 25.12.1908. copy: DCP, 8'37" (from paper print, 503 ft., 15 fps); titles: ENG. source: Film Preservation Society, Los Angeles (DCP); Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA (paper print). Digital restoration, scanning: 2022. Intertitles written by Film Preservation Society. 

     Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone 2026: The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: Philip Carli.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi, 3 Oct 2026

Tracey Goessel (GCM 2026): "Here we have the first official “Jones” comedy: a single joke gag built around split trousers and the antics that ensue at a dress ball. The story itself is scarcely worthy of comment. But, as always, small pleasures can be found. Look for the hint of a secret affair between a guest and the welcoming hostess. Wince at the man in blackface acting the part of coat-check clerk – is his wig the same one used by Alfred Paget four years later in A Beast at Bay? Look out the window next to Mack Sennett’s footman in the ballroom – is that not the same painted flat from A Smoked Husband? And isn’t it Mack we see, both as footman and, in the final shot, policeman? If it is cinematic artistry you seek, you will not find it here. But you will find a wealth of small details that will bring you back to a late autumn day in 1908. Even in this minor charmer, it is a journey worth taking."

AA: One might call Mr. Jones at the Ball a case of the "slight narrative". Out of almost nothing, Griffith creates a wild choreography of slapstick action. It is almost breathlessly fast, and the choreography is always assured when the characters criss-cross at an amazing speed. Bear and ice-bear rugs are an amusing element as later in Chaplin's comedy shorts. Mack Sennett who appears among the cast may have been inspired.

D. W. Griffith: One Touch of Nature (1908) 2026 digital restoration Film Preservation Society

ONE TOUCH OF NATURE (US 1909) dir: D. W. Griffith. story: ? photog: Arthur Marvin, G. W. Bitzer. cast: Arthur Johnson, Florence Lawrence, Marion Leonard, Charles Inslee, Mack Sennett, Harry Solter, George Gebhart, Gertrude Robinson, Jeannie MacPherson, Dorothy West. prod: American Mutoscope & Biograph Company. filmed: 13-18.11.1908 (NY Studio). rel: 1.1.1909. copy: DCP, 12'18" (from paper print, 724 ft., 16 fps); titles: ENG. source: Film Preservation Society, Los Angeles (DCP); Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA (paper print). Digital restoration, scanning: 2026. Intertitles written by Film Preservation Society

    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone 2026: The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: Philip Carli.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi, 3 Oct 2026

Tracey Goessel (GCM 2026): "Here is an improbable melodrama, encompassing the death of one child, the catatonic state of her mourning mother, and the mother’s restoration with the rescue of a battered orphan. While Griffith cross-cuts effectively we should also acknowledge his staging of the street sequences. "

"The first such scene includes a family playing ring-around-the-rosy; a drunk falling on his backside; our evil hag and hapless orphan; multiple bowler-hatted pedestrians; and a trotting newsboy. The subsequent shot has its own micro-dramas. Russell Merritt (The Griffith Project, Vol. 1) writes, “Griffith sets the scene by having three chorus girls dropped off by escorts at the stage door. Each departure, quick though it is, is made distinctive: the first woman gives her man a warm goodbye kiss, the second couple is merely polite, the third positively surly.” What his view of the smeary paper print did not provide was the recognition of the third chorus girl. Under a heavy veil, we see Florence Lawrence serving as an extra, in addition to the female lead. It is, perhaps, a measure of how the industry had yet to acknowledge how recognizable these faces would become. The star system was not yet born. But we are up to 1909. And Mary Pickford was coming soon."

AA: Made in the tradition of the Sunday school play, proceeding in tableaux, reduced to the essentials, contrasting a happy family and a miserable family, both with a child. The child of the happy family dies, and the child of the doomed family is in danger, as well, but in a last minute rescue she is adopted to the happy one. Plausibility is not pursued, but room to powerful visions is opened. The mother's mental breakdown when her daughter dies. The unflinching account of the violence against the cursed family's daughter. Such scenes may be digested more easily within the melodramatic mode than in a realistic storyline. Again, a miracle happens: as soon as she receives a new daughter, the mother is cured and the girl is saved. Happiness is back. The film might be called a fairytale, just like The Christmas Burglars.

D. W. Griffith: The Christmas Burglars (1908) 2026 digital restoration Film Preservation Society

 

D. W. Griffith: The Christmas Burglars (US 1908). Florence Lawrence. Photo: Film Preservation Society, Los Angeles.

THE CHRISTMAS BURGLARS (US 1908) prod: American Mutoscope & Biograph Company. dir: D. W. Griffith. story: ?. photog: G. W. Bitzer. cast: Florence Lawrence, Adele De Garde, George Gebhardt, Marion Leonard, Charles Inslee, Harry Solter, Mack Sennett, Arthur Johnson. filmed: 28,30.11.1908 (NY Studio, 8th Ave and 14th Street, NYC). rel: 22.12.1908. copy: DCP, 11'39" (from paper print, 679 ft., 15 fps); titles: ENG. source: Film Preservation Society, Los Angeles (DCP); Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA (paper print). Digital restoration, scanning: 2026. Intertitles written by Film Preservation Society 

    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone 2026: The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: Philip Carli.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi, 3 Oct 2026

Tracey Goessel (GCM 2026): "If An Awful Moment is the nightmare before Christmas, The Christmas Burglars is an exercise in wish fulfillment. It has all the elements melodrama could require: a Christmas Eve setting; a starving widow and her daughter; a hard-hearted pawnshop owner; and a Runyonesque gallery of burglars and thieves. The discovery of a child’s plaintive letter to Santa prompts the store’s denizens to sneak into the tenement with food, gifts, and even a tree. Christmas by way of chloroform. On top of that, we get two city exteriors. What’s not to love? In terms of cinematic progression, Griffith takes the cut-to-what-the-character-is-thinking-about idea that he originated in After Many Years and does it one better. The final shot of the film includes a double exposure of the flinty-hearted pawnbroker, leaning on his counter in happy contemplation of his good deed. Instead of a direct cut to the scene of the celebration, and cutting back, Griffith and Bitzer staged a double exposure. The pawnshop image is shared by the tenement image, which then fades and leaves us back in the shop. Given that the double set of sprocket holes document that this effect was done in a contact printer and not in the camera itself, this feels like a Christmas gift to film historians everywhere."

AA: A Christmas Carol saga in the lineage of Charles Dickens. A formulaic plot gives room to genuine emotion. The little girl's sadness. The mother's desperation. The pawnbroker's shady business in collusion with burglars. Class society. The pawnbroker's change of heart on Christmas, like that of Ebenezer Scrooge. "A heart softened, never truly hard again". The miracle of Christmas. For some, there are no miracles. For others, everything is a miracle. I belong to the latter team. Another Griffith short that resembles a Sunday school play. With a powerful composition and mise-en-scène and certain fascinating images, such as the reflection of street life on a shop window.

D. W. Griffith: The Valet's Wife (1908) 2025 digital restoration Film Preservation Society

The Valet’s Wife (D. W. Griffith, US, 1908). Film Preservation Society, Los Angeles. Griffith can't help flaunting his racial insensitivity. A playboy wants to fool his rich benefactor uncle by presenting himself as a family man. The surprise to all is that "his baby", whisked from the orphan asylum for the occasion, is black.

THE VALET’S WIFE (US 1908). prod: American Mutoscope & Biograph Company. dir: D. W. Griffith. sogg/story: ?. photog: Arthur Marvin, G. W. Bitzer. cast: Mack Sennett, Harry Solter, Robert Harron, George Gebhardt, Charles Avery, Florence Lawrence, Arthur Johnson. filmed: 10/11.09.1908 (NY Studio, /including exterior). rel: 01.12.1908. copy: DCP, 8'43" (from paper print, 508 ft., 16 fps); titles: ENG. source: Film Preservation Society, Los Angeles (DCP); Library of Congress, National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA (paper print). Digital restoration, scanning: 2025. Intertitles written by Film Preservation Society.

    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone 2026: The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: Philip Carli.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi, 3 Oct 2026

Tracey Goessel (GCM 2026): "This film hasn’t aged well. It is hard to view a comedy where the visual punchline is the purported infant of the protagonist turning out to be – wait for it – a negro! Even worse: the Biograph Bulletin narrates the punchline thus: “…one look was enough – ‘Great Jupiter, it’s a coon!’ ” Not that contemporary critics were any more fastidious with their language. The Moving Picture News (12.05.1908) wrote, “…the grinning face of a ‘pickaninny’ comes into view.” (The infant in question does not grin. It cries, as well it might, being born of color in America in 1908.) Curiously, Griffith telegraphs to the audience that the baby is black in an earlier shot – either an oversight, or an intentional buildup of audience suspense. The comedy has a few thin virtues. Griffith moves his characters around different settings (dining room, hallway, street) with competence. The narrative moves quickly – so quickly, it feels as if Bitzer was deliberately undercranking. (Production logs do not confirm this.) Finally, we have Bobby Harron in the bellhop uniform. Sometimes that is the only consolation we can seek."

AA: A vulgar farce, full of aggravating evidence for a case against D. W. Griffith the racist. However, there are more than one side to that case. Depressing to watch. A vivid sense of action and slapstick carries the farce. It is offensive but not boring. The plot is transnational: a rich relative funds the life of a wastrel in the belief that there is a family with children to support, or at least a promise of a marriage. There is even a Finnish variation, Erkki Karu's Runoilija muuttaa.

D. W. Griffith: Money Mad (1908) 2025 digital restoration Film Preservation Society

D. W. Griffith: Money Mad (US 1908). Harry Solter, George Gebhardt as two robbers. Griffith learns to master blocking and composition in depth. Photo: Film Preservation Society.

MONEY MAD (US 1908) prod: American Mutoscope & Biograph Company. dir: D. W. Griffith. story: based on the short story by Jack London, “Just Meat” (The Cosmopolitan, 03.1907; retitled “Pals”, London Magazine, 04.1908). photog: G. W. Bitzer. cast: Harry Solter, Florence Lawrence, George Gebhardt, Arthur Johnson, Mack Sennett, Jeannie MacPherson. filmed: 28.10.1908, 02,16.11.1908 (NY Studio; undocumented location). rel: 04.12.1908. copy: DCP, 11'39" (from paper print, 684 ft., 15 fps); titles: ENG. source: Film Preservation Society, Los Angeles (DCP); Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA (paper print). Digital restoration, scanning: 2025. Intertitles written by Film Preservation Society

    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone 2026: The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: Philip Carli.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi, 3 Oct 2026

Tracey Goessel (GCM 2026) "Money Mad is For Love of Gold on steroids. Griffith adds layers of Grand Guignol to the narrative of two crooks distrusting and killing each other. A little girl is throttled for her wallet. Our two thieves stalk the throttler through urban alleys (anticipating The Musketeers of Pig Alley), strangling him in his cellar and taking his gold. Once at their hovel, they manage to simultaneously stab and shoot each other. We do not stop there. Griffith has previously introduced the prerequisite drunken hag to the occasion, and she finds the bodies – and the gold. In her rapture, she knocks a lit candle off the table, and sets the place ablaze. The last we see of this scene is roiling smoke, heading straight for the audience. Money Mad was Griffith’s 40th release. For Love of Gold was his 9th. But this is misleading. It is more precise to state that a mere three months separated the filming dates of these two titles. Griffith absorbed much in that period – and there was much more to come."

THE PREVIOUS SCREENING: The Griffith Project 1 (1997) n:o 73. 16 mm from paper print, Library of Congress, intertitles missing, 264 ft /15 fps/ 11 min, piano: Edward von Past.

AA: A primitive, atavistic joy of storytelling carries Money Mad. The approach has affinities with school plays and Punch and Judy shows. Reduced to the essentials, Money Mad is sometimes almost abstract, devoid of nuance in psychology and character-building. Yet there is a stark sense of composition, and the characters in their stylized roles can be truly moving. Griffith is unflinching in conveying the brutality of the murders (of the little girl and the old cellar-dweller). The irony of fate and the poetic justice of the two murderers killing each other is conveyed with admirable brevity. This movie already has the Hustonian "vanitas vanitatum" theme of Treasure of Sierra Madre and many "big caper"  stories. The final sequence is a stunner. Only an impenetrable cloud of smoke remains as all is reduced to ashes.

With great pleasure I watch this new restoration of a film that was insufferably painful to watch in the 1997 screening.

45 Le Giornate del Cinema Muto: Pordenone 3-10 ottobre 2026

Cover: Italia Almirante Manzini in La statua di carne (IT 1921, D: Mario Almirante). Photo: Cinematek / Cinémathèque royale de Belgique, Bruxelles.

Metropolis (DE 1927, D: Fritz Lang) 100 years. In his essay "The new movie supervillains", Danny Leigh compares Silicon Valley oligarchs with the mad scientist Rotwang and Fredersen, the dictator of the megacity. We are also reminded of Robot Maria, the soulless imitation of humanity. "Meet the new movie villains: Zuckerberg, Musk and Altman. Unflattering portraits await all three tech titans — but while filmmakers vilify AI, studios are investing in it hungrily. From left: Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman and Elon Musk are all subjects of films due for release in the coming months that portray them in a negative light" © The Red Dress. Financial Times Weekend, 3 October 2026.

CATALOGO 2026 ONLINE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Premio Jean Mitry / The Jean Mitry Award

The Jonathan Dennis Memorial Lecture

L’arte dei costumi / Costume Design and Silent Cinema

Collegium 2026

The 2026 Pordenone Masterclasses

Eventi speciali / Special Events

• Don Q, Son of Zorro

• A colpi di note / Striking a New Note

• Kurutta ippēji / A Page of Madness

• The Iron Horse

Weimar senza censure / Weimar Uncensored: Taboos and Transgressions in German Cinema, 1919-1920

Italia Almirante Manzini – 2

Marshall Neilan

L’arte del benshi / The Art of the Benshi

Cinema spagnolo / Spanish Cinema, 1896 - 1919

Lazio

Avanguardia ceca / Czech Avant-Garde

Le radici della commedia di situazione/ The Roots of Situation Comedy

Follia femminile / Female Madness

Cinema delle origini / Early Cinema

• Il progetto Biograph / The Biograph Project – 3

• Le corse fantasma / Phantom Tram Rides

• Antichità greco-romane / Greco-Roman Antiquities

Il canone rivisitato / The Canon Revisited

• Berg-Ejvind och hans hustru / The Outlaw and His Wife

• Bestia

• La Glace à trois faces

• Tell It to the Marines

• Zhizn za zhizn / [A Life for a Life]

Sine nomine – 3

Riscoperte e restauri / Rediscoveries and Restorations

Anna-Liisa Hämäläinen: Riitta Nelimarkka: hiekanjyvässä kallio / [A Bedrock Within a Grain of Sand] (a book)

 

Anna-Liisa Hämäläinen: Riitta Nelimarkka: hiekanjyvässä kallio / [A Bedrock Within a Grain of Sand] (2026). Book cover design: Timo Numminen. 

Anna-Liisa Hämäläinen: Riitta Nelimarkka: hiekanjyvässä kallio/ [A Bedrock Within a Grain of Sand]. 368 pages. Hard cover. EAN 9789528503309. Docendo, 19 March 2026.

DOCENDO OFFICIAL: "Riitta Nelimarkka – A Bedrock Within a Grain of Sand. The story of an uncompromising artist’s growth.

Riitta Nelimarkka’s biography recounts the journey of a multi-talented child from a Munkkiniemi family into a distinctive artist—a person for whom freedom, family, and love are paramount.

Professor Riitta Nelimarkka’s art radiates glowing colors and infectious joy. She is one of the most versatile and renowned contemporary Finnish artists.

Born in Helsinki in 1948, Nelimarkka is the granddaughter of the painter Eero Nelimarkka and the daughter of the inventor and engineer Antti Nelimarkka. Although she could have become a pianist, she dedicated her life to the visual arts instead. Nelimarkka achieved her breakthrough with her animated films Sammon tarina (The Story of the Sampo) and Seitsemän veljestä (Seven Brothers). Her works have been featured in numerous exhibitions and festivals—both in Finland and abroad—as well as at Bonga Castle in Loviisa, a venue dedicated to her art.

The biography also reveals the person behind the artworks, sharing both the joys and sorrows of her life."

AA: Riitta Nelimarkka is a master of Finnish animation and a pathbreaker with inspired works such as Sammon tarina I-VI (FI 1972-1974), Piispa Henrik ja Lalli (1975), Seitsemän veljestä (FI 1979), Bagatelles 1-13 (1984), directed together with her husband Jaakko Seeck, based on Nelimarkka's delightful watercolours, animated via the cutout method.

Seitsemän veljestä, a foundational work in Finnish literature, has not been much filmed. There is only one live action theatrical movie (Wilho Ilmari, 1939) plus teleplays, such as Jouko Turkka's controversial tv series in 12 episodes (1989). Riitta Nelimarkka distinction is in capturing delightfully Kivi's sense of humour and fantasy and his feeling for nature. Hers is a work of lasting value.

However, animation is but a fraction in Nelimarkka's incredible creativity. She is a painter, sculptor, photographer, printmaker, textile artist and art book creator. In moving images, her interests include musical videos and documentaries. She has published dozens of books. Her hundreds of exhibitions range from Soul to Doha and from Los Angeles to Lima. Her specialties include large-format series of tapestries, charcoal works, serigraphies, wool reliefs and photomontages. 

An iconoclast, an irreverent dissident, always finding new angles. This book is a breathtaking survey about a restless soul. On pages 333-339 there is a curriculum vitae in small print. It is a good place to start studying the book, which is a biography (written in the third person) but transparently also a quasi-autobiography and even an anti-biography. It is a story of an artist's life which is inseparably also a story of a family. Riitta's grandfather Eero Nelimarkka was a model in combining artistic talent and a solid business sense. They can come into conflict, but the conflict can turn into a source of creativity and productivity.

Hiekanjyvässä kallio is a thorough and abundant contribution to the literature of (Finnish) animation and art. A story of an amazing life. Well illustrated, it gives a sense of Nelimarkka's colourful world and imagery.

In Riitta Nelimarkka's adventurous life, truth is stranger than fiction, yet again.