Archival Spaces 409: Summfilmtage Bonn 2026 Uploaded 2 October 2026 The Garden of Eden (1928, Lewis Milestone). Photo: San Francisco Film Preserve This is the final installment of my report on this…

Archival Spaces 408: Summfilmtage Bonn 2026 Uploaded 18 September 2026 Shadows of the Big City (1925, Willi Wolff) with Ellen Richter slumming it in Parisian Apache Bar. The Bonn Silent Film Festiv…

Archival Spaces 407: The Saga of Gösta Berling (1924, Maurice Stiller) Uploaded 4 September 2026 The Saga of Gösta Berling (1924, Maurice Stiller) This year’s Silent Film Festival in Bon, Germany, …

Archival Spaces 406: Letty Lyndon (1932) screened at American Legion Hollywood Uploaded 21 August 2026 Robert Montgomery, Joan Crawford in Letty Lynton (1932, Clarence Brown) On 25 July 2026, the A…

Archival Spaces 405: The World Belongs to Us (1937) Uploaded 7 August 2026 Bohuš Záhorský as Drexler in Svět patří nám (1937, Martin Frič) In my last blog, I discussed the films of the Czech comedy…

Archival Spaces 404: Voskovec & Werich Uploaded 24 July 2026 Werich & Voskovec My Dad grew up in Prague in the 1930s, a teenager. He later raved to me about Voskovec and Werich, who he had …

Archival Spaces 403: Weimar Germany’s Most Popular Unknown Film Star Uploaded 10 July 2026 Ellen Richter in Moral (1928, Willi Wolff) Despite having starred in ca. 70 films, despite having been one…

Archival Spaces 401: Ardiouma Soma Accepts Award Uploaded 26 June 2026 In April, at the 2026 FIAF Conference in Rabat, Morocco, Ardiouma Soma, the retired festival director of the Festival Panafric…

Archival Spaces 402:  Film Preservation Hoaxes Uploaded 28 June 2026 Filmmaker Colin McKenzie in Forgotten Silver (1995) Recently, a story circulated on the net that a film archivist at the Ca…

Archival Spaces:  Bonfires of the Humanities Uploaded:  15 May 2026 Exhibition “Degenerate Art” at the Galeriegebäude, Munich Hofgarten (1937) I’ve been combing through m…

Archival Spaces 398: German Cinema’s Low Point Uploaded 1 May 1951 German cinema damaged by Allied bombing, 1948 Today is my birthday. I (and my twin brother, Michael) were born in a medieval town …

Archival Spaces 396 Bernhard Frankfurter’s On the Road to Hollywood (1982) Uploaded 3 April 2026 Paul Henreid, Bernhard Frankfurter (back). Photo: © Gerhard P. Winter In April 1980, I began working…

Archival Spaces 395 White Russians in Hollywood Uploaded 20 March 2026 Emil Jannings, William Powell in The Last Command (1928, Joseph von Sternberg) A still photograph from Joseph von Sternberg&#8…

Archival Spaces 394 Curating a 1960s Avant-Garde Program Uploaded 6 March 2026 Claes Oldenburg’s Snapshots from the City, performed during Ray Gun Spex at Judson Church, February 1960. For me, film…

Archival Spaces 393: The Reception of Cinema Novo in America Uploaded 20 February 2026 Antônio das Mortes (1969, Glauber Rocha) A year ago, on 14 February 2025, Carlos Diegues, one of the best-know…

Archival Spaces 392 Czech Silent Film History Uploaded 6 February 2026 The Organist at St. Vitus Cathedral (1929) Back in Summer 2023 (Blog 326), I wrote about a Czech film playing at the San Franc…

Archival Spaces 391 Monograph: People On Sunday Uploaded 23 January 2026 Erwin Splettstößler, Annie Schreyer, Brigitte Borchert, Wolfgang von Weitershausen For years, I have been teaching a German …

Archival Spaces 390 My Short Government Career Uploaded 9 January 1989 Entrance, “Filmmaking in America,” Opening 3 April 1988 In the Fall of 1987, I received a call from David Paul, a …

Archival Spaces 389: Saul Bass wins an Academy Award Uploaded 26 December 2025 Why Man Creates, Saul Bass, 1968 Ten years ago, in 2015, I published Saul Bass: Anatomy of Film Design, a University o…

Archival Spaces 388: Riefenstahl (2024) – The Movie Uploaded 12 December 2025 Leni Riefenstahl The penultimate scene in Andres Feiel’s new documentary, Riefenstahl (2024), which opened recently in …

Archival Spaces 387: Otto Krieg’s German Film in the Mirror of the Ufa Uploaded 28 November 2025        The Congress Dances (1931, Erik Charell) Ufa Production sh…

Archival Spaces 385: Dark Carnival. The Secret World of Tod Browning Uploaded 31 October 2025 Lon Chaney in The Unknown (1927) Beginning with D.W. Griffith, but certainly after the Supreme Court&#8…

Archival Spaces 384: Remembering Bundesarchiv President Friedrich P. Kahlenberg Uploaded 17 October 2025 Autosave-File vom d-lab2/3 der AgfaPhoto GmbH Prof. Dr. Friedrich P. Kahlenberg would have c…

Archival Spaces 383: Four German Comedies (1931-32) Blu-Ray Uploaded 3 October 2025 Proletarian back alley singers in Ich bei Tag und Du bei Nacht (1932, Ludwig Berger) Flicker Alley has released a…

382: Abraham Ravett Archival Spaces 382: Abraham Ravett Films in Berlin Uploaded 19 September 2025 Łódź:22592 (2019, Abraham Ravett) I’ve known independent filmmaker Abraham Ravett for 35 years. We…

Archival Spaces 381:  Identifying Silent Film Actors Uploaded 5 September 2025 Ein Sommernachtstraum (1925, Hans Neumann) with Tamara, Charlotte Ander Identifying film actors who are not liste…

Archival Spaces 379:  Photography by Karel Čapek Uploaded 8 August 2025 Olga Scheinpflugová with actress Adina Mandlová and puppies, 1936, The name Karel Čapek (1890-1938) is familiar to Ameri…

Archival Spaces 378: The Irish Film Company’s Knocknagow (1918) Uploaded 25 July 2025 The eviction of the Brian Family, Knocknagow (1918, Fred O’Donovan) The San Francisco Silent Film Festiva…

Archival Spaces 377: Hans Feld, Weimar Film Journalist Uploaded 11 July 2025 Hans Feld is probably the most well-known and prolific film journalist writing for Weimar Germany’s most widely read fil…

Archival Spaces 376: Martina Weisz Named Director, Steven Spielberg Film Archive Uploaded 27 June 2025 I first made contact in 1982 with the Steven Spielberg Film Archive in Jerusalem, when I was r…

375: My career as an Art Smuggler Archival Spaces 375 Uploaded  13 June 2025 Mikuláš Medek: Three Events (1971) In Spring 1979 I was working as a free-lance curator on the exhibition, “Film un…

Archival Spaces 374: Hanns Heinz Ewers Novel, Alraune (1911) Uploaded 30 May 2025 Alraune (1927, Henryk Galeen) A couple of months ago, I recorded a Blu-ray commentary for the 1927 German horror fi…

Archival Spaces 373: American Biograph Co. 68mm Films Added to UNESCO Register Uploaded 16 May 2025 Prinsengracht, Amsterdam (1899) A month ago, the British Film Institute, London, and Holland’s Ey…

Archival Spaces 372:  Rachael Stoeltje named Chief, Library of Congress, Motion Picture Division Uploaded: 2 May 2025 I know, I’m a couple of months late on this, given that Rachael Stoeltje starte…

Archival Spaces 371 Berlinale Retrospective II Uploaded 18 April 2025 Inga Seyric, Regina Jorn in The Girls from Atlantis (1970) Six weeks ago I posted my blog about the Berlinale Retrospective “Wi…

Archival Spaces 370: Hobart Bosworth Films on Blu-Ray Uploaded 4 April 2025 Unless you are a silent film aficionado, you probably may not have heard of Hobart Bosworth. He was already in his 40s wh…

Archival Spaces 369: The World Will Tremble (2024) Uploaded 21 March 2025 Roll call in Chełmno, The World Will Tremble (2025) A Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival screening of The World Will Tremble …

Archival Spaces 368 Retro: German Genre Films from the 1970s 7 March 2025 Nicht schummeln, Liebling (1971, Joachim Hasler) Hard to believe that it was 51 years ago that I attended my first Berlinal…

Archival Spaces 367  The First Mexican Sound Film Restored Uploaded 21 February 2025 Considered Mexico’s first “national” production in the sound film era, Santa (1932) was based on the eponym…

Archival Spaces 366:   Marta Eggerth’s First Film Uploaded 7 February 2025 New Yeat’s Celeration on set of Die Bräutigamswitwe, Elstree Studios, London The independent film producer…

Archival Spaces 365: Nicholas Baer: Historical Turns: Weimar Cinema and the Crisis of Historicism (2024) Uploaded 24 January 2025 Helen of Troy (1924, Manfred Noa) Nicholas Baer’s now-published dis…

Archival Spaces 364 Peter Lorre’s Mr. Moto Detective Series Uploaded 10 January 2025 Think Fast, Mr. Moto (1937, Norman Foster) When Adolf Hitler ascended to power on 30 January 1933, Peter Lorre k…

The independent filmmaking community is up in arms over the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ recent decision to gut its archive and library.

Archival Spaces 363 Mitchell and Kenyon Discovery in Dispute Uploaded 27 December 2024 Blackpool Pier (1904, Mitchell & Kenyon) I can’t quite remember when I first saw the Mitchell and Kenyon f…

Archival Spaces 361 Accidental Archivism: Shaping Cinema’s Futures with Remnants of the Past Uploaded 29 November 2024 Decomposing 16mm film As anyone knows, who has been following the fortunes of …

Archival Spaces 360 Ich klage an / I accuse (1941) Uploaded 15 November 2024 Documentary image of patients being loaded into busses for T4-Aktion (1939-41) My German-born mother once confessed to m…