Pandora's Box screens in Toronto, Canada on Jan 26

Pandora's Box, starring Louise Brooks, will screen in Toronto, Canada on Sunday January 26th at the Revue Cinema (400 Roncesvalles Avenue). More info here. Event Time(s):4:15 p.m. Website: www.revuecineama.ca Costs: Range:$10 - $19

Pandora’s Box
Dir. G.W. Pabst (1929)
Starring Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, and Francis Lederer
109 mins.

It doesn’t really get better than Louise Brooks in Pandora’s Box, does it? Brooks fled Hollywood and escaped to the German film industry to seal her fate as an indelible force in silent film, forever to be remembered as the sensual, yet naïve; unintentionally vampish and victimized Lulu. Under the direction of master G.W. Pabst, the film’s cinematography, costumes, and narration are almost unparalleled in the medium. In short: Pandora’s Box is a masterpiece and Louise Brooks is a legend here - visually, as well as in her acting style. Her realism was so ahead of her time that audiences and critics rejected her; a dismissal that history has, luckily for us, rectified. Flappers at heart unite; this is a Silent Sundays not to be missed!

Featuring live piano accompaniment by William O’Meara.

Silent Sundays, now in its fifth season, is curated by media archivist Alicia Fletcher and was founded by journalist Eric Veillette.

Feminine beauty as blinding as ten galaxial suns

"Louise Brooks is the only woman who had the ability to transfigure no matter what film into a masterpiece. The poetry of Louise is the great poetry of rare loves, of magnetism, of tension, of feminine beauty as blinding as ten galaxial suns. She is much more than a myth, she is a magical presence, a real phantom, the magnetism of the cinema." 

So said Ado Kyrou (1923-1985), a Greek-born filmmaker, writer, critic and associate of the Surrealists long resident in France. Kyrou was a contributor to the French film journal Positif, and the author of Amour - érotisme & cinéma (1957) and Le Surréalisme Au Cinéma (1963).

All Movies Love the Moon Trailer

Louise Brooks is pictured in this trailer for a forthcoming book, Gregory Robinson's All Movies Love the Moon: Prose Poems on Silent Film, to be published by Rose Metal Press in March 2014. The book will be for sale at www.rosemetalpress.com, www.spdbooks.org, and Amazon.com. Thanx to writer Lisa K. Buchanan for pointing me to this video.

About the book from the publisher: Anyone who watches silent movies will notice how often crashes occur—trains, cars, and people constantly collide and drama or comedy ensues. Gregory Robinson's All Movies Love the Moon is also a collision, a theater where prose, poetry, images, and history meet in an orchestrated accident. The result is a film textbook gone awry, a collection of linked prose poems and images tracing silent cinema's relationship with words—the bygone age of title cards. The reel begins with early experiments in storytelling, such as Méliès' A Trip to the Moon and Edison's The European Rest Cure, and ends with the full-length features that contested the transition to talkies. Of course, anyone seeking an accurate account of silent movies will not find it here. Through Robinson's captivating anecdotes, imaginings, and original artwork, the beauty of silent movies persists and expands. Like the lovely grainy films of the 1910s and 20s, All Movies Love the Moon uses forgotten stills, projected text, and hazy frames to bring an old era into new focus. Here, movies that are lost or fading serve as points of origin, places to begin.

Sunday, March 16
Gregory Robinson reading from All Movies Love the Moon at the Marble Room Reading Series at 4:00 pm. Free and open to the public. 

The Marble Room Reading Series
The Parlor
1434 N. Western Ave., Chicago, Illinois

Friday, April 11
Gregory Robinson reading from All Movies Love the Moon at the Caffeine Corridor Poetry Series at 7:00 pm. Free and open to the public.


The Caffiene Corridor Series
9 The Gallery
1229 Grand Ave., Phoenix, Arizona

Benevolent Siren - Remembering Louise Brooks (iconic silent film beauty)

Book trailer from Daily Motion: "Louise Brooks endures as one of silent film's most charismatic and contemporary actresses. Immortalized in Pandora's Box, she left a disinterested Hollywood to suffer years of hardship until finding a new career as an author. Later in her life, an admiring 20-year old managed to pry a chink into the armor of the reclusive actress, establishing a friendship that revealed a hidden, gentler side. Their friendship is lovingly remembered in Benevolent Siren. Available for iPad at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/244044 and for Kindle at http://www.amazon.com/Benevolent-Siren-Remembering-Louise-ebook/dp/B009QQLSX2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352138192&sr=8-1&keywords=benevolent+siren." Check it out.

Benevolent Siren - Remembering Louise Brooks... by 12Preludes

Quintessentially quintessential Louise Brooks

Quintessentially quintessential . . . .

Sammy Tramp sings "Mack The Knife"

Sammich the Tramp (also known as Sammy Tramp) is a multi-talented, Chaplinesque perfomer. She is Creator/Founder at Sammy Tramp's Traveling Flicker Factory and Artistic Director/Producer at The Beggar's Carnivale.

I first became acquainted with this special performer a few years back when she was performing as Lulu (see blurry snapshot from 2006!) in "Lulu: a black and white silent play," a live stage adaption without dialogue of G.W. Pabst's film of Frank Wedekind's Pandora's Box. It was terrefic. The Louise Brooks Society encourages everyone to check out Sammy Tramp's various webpages, or better yet, check out one of her live performances. She is based in St. Louis, Missouri but travels all around.

Here's the latest from Sammy Tramp. Sammy puts down the kazoo and uses her mouth to sing "Mack The Knife." Originally written by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill for The Three Penny Opera and made famous by Bobby Darin.

English advertisement features Louise Brooks

Nick Wrigley sent word that this newspaper advertisement from Bolton, Lancashire, England has long featured Louise Brooks.

Documentary About the Great Writers Who Sat at the Algonquin Round Table

Barry Paris' swonderful biography of Louise Brooks details the time the then 17 year old actress lived at the famous Algonquin Hotel in New York City. The building, located at 59 West 44th Street in Manhattan, has been designated as a New York City Historic Landmark.

The 174-room hote, opened in 1902, was originally conceived as a residential hotel but was quickly converted to a traditional lodging establishment. Its first manager-owner, Frank Case (with whom Louise Brooks was acquianted), established many of the hotel's best-known traditions. Perhaps its best-known tradition is hosting literary and theatrical notables, most prominently the members of the Algonquin Round Table.

In June 1919, the hotel became the site of daily meetings of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of journalists, authors, publicists, artists and actors who gathered to exchange bon mots over lunch in the main dining room. The group met almost daily for the better part of ten years. Some of the core members of this "Vicious Circle" included Herman J. Mankiewicz, Franklin P. Adams, Robert Benchley, Heywood Broun, Marc Connelly, Jane Grant, Ruth Hale, George S. Kaufman, Neysa McMein, Dorothy Parker, Harold Ross, Robert E. Sherwood, Alexander Woollcott and others.

Brooks never happened to meet Dorthy Parker, according to the Barry Paris biography, but she did report seeing her and other members of the vicious circle at the hotel. "I watched Robert Sherwood and Dorothy Parker and a lot of other people jabbering and waving their hands at the Round Table, wondering what made them famous." Benchley was a friend, and Sherwood reviewed Brooks' films in the pages of Life magazine a few years ago. Brooks was also friendly with Mankiewicz.

The Ten Year Lunch is an award winning documentary about the hotel and the famous writers who hung out there. It is informative and fun. Check it out.

Louise Brooks inspired song, "Hopeless"

Here are two version of the Louise Brooks inspired song, "Hopeless." The first is a video (by Stuart Pound) to a recording by the UK band Evangelista. The song dates from the 1990's, and is a tribute to Louise Brooks. The starting point for "Hopeless" is a song of the same title recorded by Evangelista. The song is about an impossible love for Louise Brooks, impossible because she died in 1984.

Hopeless from Stuart Pound on Vimeo.

The second version is a live recording by the Great Admirers of the "Evangelista cult classic."
The video was shot at the Seven Stars pub in Bristol, England on a Sunday afternoon, June 22, 2008.
Sound by Alfie Kingston. Long live Lulu!