A Tale of Two Worlds

A semi-documentary experimental 1930 German silent film created by amateurs with a small budget. With authentic scenes of the metropolis city of Berlin, it's the first film from the later famous screenwriters/directors Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann.

In a futuristic city sharply divided between the rich and the poor, the son of the city's mastermind meets a prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.

A sweet-natured young Irish woman is courted by a romantic poet and a local country gentleman. Which man will she choose?

Peter Olsen, a young social outcast who lives alone on a rundown farm and raises vegetables for a living, finds his only consolation in liquor, though Dorcas Chatham, daughter of the general store owner, begs him to forego this indulgence. Returning from town, he finds a dog by the roadside, apparently injured by a car, and takes it home. Later, on a drunken spree, Peter is attacked by robbers, but the dog comes to his rescue and frightens the assailants away. Stirred by the unselfish devotion of his dog, Peter gradually regains his self-respect, and Dorcas falls in love with him and accepts his proposal, though she fears the dog. When Peter enters the dog in a show, another exhibitor proves to be its owner, and Peter is first parted from, then reunited with, "his" dog. Dorcas overcomes her fear and is united with Peter.

Young Cabiria is kidnapped by pirates and sold as a slave in Carthage. Just as she's to be sacrificed to Moloch, Cabiria is rescued by Fulvius Axilla, a good-hearted Roman spy, and his powerful slave, Maciste. The trio are broken up as Cabiria is entrusted to a woman of noble birth. With Cabiria's fate unknown, Maciste punished for his heroism, and Fulvius sent away to fight for Rome, is there any hope of our heroes reuniting?

A man covers his head with several headscarfs, one by one... .

A classic of the silent age, this film tells the story of the doomed but ultimately canonized 15th-century teenage warrior. On trial for claiming she'd spoken to God, Jeanne d'Arc is subjected to inhumane treatment and scare tactics at the hands of church court officials. Initially bullied into changing her story, Jeanne eventually opts for what she sees as the truth. Her punishment, a famously brutal execution, earns her perpetual martyrdom.

Robin Hood is a 1912 film made by Eclair Studios when it and many other early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based in Fort Lee, New Jersey at the beginning of the 20th century. The movie's costumes feature enormous versions of the familiar hats of Robin and his merry men, and uses the unusual effect of momentarily superimposing images different animals over each character to emphasize their good or evil qualities. The film was directed by Étienne Arnaud and Herbert Blaché, and written by Eustace Hale Ball. A restored copy of the 30-minute film exists and was exhibited in 2006 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

A dramatized account of a great Russian naval mutiny and a resultant public demonstration, showing support, which brought on a police massacre. The film had an incredible impact on the development of cinema and is a masterful example of montage editing.

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

Sergei M. Eisenstein's docu-drama about the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. Made ten years after the events and edited in Eisenstein's 'Soviet Montage' style, it re-enacts in celebratory terms several key scenes from the revolution.

Victor Stowell, son of the deemster of the Isle of Man, is engaged to Fenella Stanley. He becomes involved in an intrigue with local girl Bessie Collister, becomes the deemster on his father's death, and is forced to try Bessie for killing her illegitimate child.

The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the story of a man and a woman who are passionately in love. Their attempts to consummate their passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, by the Church and bourgeois society in general.

An aging doorman, after being fired from his prestigious job at a luxurious hotel, is forced to face the scorn of his friends, neighbours and society.

A sheep farmer brings his new wife to his father's ranch and the old man takes an instant dislike to her.

A young man travels to Mars in a rocket ship, where he leads a popular uprising against the ruling group with the support of Queen Aelita, who has fallen in love with him after watching him through a telescope.

The heavily indebted baron Henrik von Hagen, who loves women and partying, learns that his former lover, Russian ballerina Madame Vera Vasiljevna, will be visiting Finland. They are reunited and sparks fly. But Vasiljevna's new hobby casts a shadow over their romance.

A British army officer refuses to avenge the death of a general who was murdered years earlier. He is awarded three feathers by his officers. When his fiancée fails to defend his stance, he plucks a feather from her fan. He proves his courage by rescuing his comrades in dangerous and life-threatening situations. Later he returns each feather as proof of his redemption and courage.

A lottery win of $5,000 forever changes the lives of a miner turned dentist and his wife.

Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie's congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.