Featuring a 100-year-old cult classic, a rediscovered lost film, and much more – all with live music.
Yorkshire Silent Film Festival returns this month for its fifth edition with an exciting and diverse programme of silent films with musical accompaniment including eight shows in Sheffield. Audiences can choose from a centenary celebration of a horror classic, a rediscovered lost gem, as well as great drama and animated films plus slapstick comedy shows for families.
Sheffield film fans are invited to lose themselves in the magic of live-scored silent cinema with a weekend of events on 22nd and 23rd October at Yellow Arch Studios, located within a former Edwardian nuts and bolts factory. Highlights include a special centenary screening of Benjamin Christensen’s seminal Swedish silent film Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages, live scored by the festival’s improvising ensemble featuring multi-instrumentalist Jon Boden of Bellowhead fame; Carl Dreyer’s beguiling The Bride of Glomdal from Norway accompanied by one of the world’s finest silent film pianists, John Sweeney; and the first public screening of a recently rediscovered 1918 film of George Eliot’s, Adam Bede.
Audiences in Sheffield can also enjoy eighty minutes of mischief, anarchy, and destruction with Cinema’s First Nasty Women – the first of three unique programmes of short films celebrating the subversive, disruptive and provocative women of early film.
The Swedish horror classic Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages will be accompanied by a live score.
There will also be the rare opportunity to see René Jayet’s beautifully shot film, A Woman Passed By (Une femme a passé). And for families, the Sheffield weekender includes Lotte Reiniger’s enchanting silhouette animation The Adventures of Prince Achmed, Buster Keaton in Our Hospitality, and a triple bill of slapstick comedy with live music.
Jonny Best, artistic director, Yorkshire Silent Film Festival, said: “We’re incredibly excited about this year’s festival programme, and what a line-up it is! There really is something for everyone – from comedy classics for all the family to enjoy to silent cinema rarities. At the heart of the festival is the live music, created on-the-spot by a crack team of players from all kinds of musical backgrounds including folk, jazz, classical, experimental, contemporary and film music.”
The fifth edition of Yorkshire Silent Film Festival takes place from 14th October 2022 to 6th November 2022 in ten venues across the North. For details of the full programme, visit ysff.co.uk.
For more film and culture events in Sheffield, head here.
