NSFF | Films Aflame: Recomposing Silent Stories

An estimated eighty to ninety per cent of all silent films have been completely lost to fire, decomposition and decades of neglect. When nothing remains to project, these films often vanish from our understanding of film history as well. Yet a lost film sometimes leaves other traces behind.

Film scholar Kate Saccone and pianist Meg Morley explore how these vanished stories can be shared again. Film posters, photographs, scripts, plot descriptions and surviving intertitles provide the starting point. Narration and newly composed music bring the material together.

During Films Aflame, three lost films return in three different ways. Saccone and Morley invite the audience to watch, think along and experience where reconstruction ends and imagination begins. This is not a conventional screening, but an exploratory journey through what film history has lost and what can still be told anew.

About the Netherlands Silent Film Festival
The Netherlands Silent Film Festival (NSFF) in Eindhoven is the largest festival dedicated to silent film in the Netherlands. In this original form of cinema, stories are told through images, expression and music. Without spoken dialogue, the inventiveness of the filmmakers takes centre stage.

At the festival and through programmes presented throughout the year, NSFF makes the cinematic heritage of the silent era accessible to a wide audience. It does so through film screenings, educational projects, workshops and lectures. The creativity and innovation of early cinema deserve to be seen and heard again.

For its programme, the NSFF team follows current developments in the international world of silent film, from recent rediscoveries and restorations to new research. Audience favourites share the bill with hidden gems, all presented with live musical accompaniment by international film musicians.