A Life for a Life

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.

The love story of an abused English girl and a Chinese Buddhist in a time when London was a brutal and harsh place to live.

A tramp falls in love with a beautiful blind flower girl. His on-and-off friendship with a wealthy man allows him to be the girl's benefactor and suitor.

The life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during World War I and then the October Revolution.

A gold prospector in Alaska struggles to survive the elements and win the heart of a dance hall girl.

Bear (10 minutes, 35 seconds) was Steve McQueen's first major film. Although not an overtly political work, for many viewers it raises sensitive issues about race, homoeroticism and violence. It depicts two naked men – one of whom is the artist – tussling and teasing one another in an encounter which shifts between tenderness and aggression. The film is silent but a series of stares, glances and winks between the protagonists creates an optical language of flirtation and threat.

A dramatized account of a great Russian naval mutiny and a resultant public demonstration, showing support, which brought on a police massacre.

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.

A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.

The destiny of a happy Armenian family will change forever in 1915, Ottoman Empire, (Armenian land), now Turkey and whose beautiful dreams will become memories in the eyes of the most famous Armenian American painter, who lives to paint the story of his shattered childhood.

A military explorer meets and befriends a Goldi man in Russia’s unmapped forests. A deep and abiding bond evolves between the two men, one civilized in the usual sense, the other at home in the glacial Siberian woods.

A young soprano becomes the obsession of a disfigured and murderous musical genius who lives beneath the Paris Opera House.

Šek, na kterém chyběl podpis

A gang of crooks evade the police by moving their operations to a small town. There the gang's leader encounters a faith healer and uses him to scam gullible public of funds for a supposed chapel. But when a real healing takes place, a change comes over the gang. Lost film, only the most famous scene has survived.

George Walters is a youth who is dominated by Bleary, a heartless bully, who forces him to pose as the son of millionaire George Warring, kidnapped as a baby. The missing son had a twin brother who had recently died, but a painting of the shadow of the late son is on one wall. Walters' shadow matches this painting perfectly, establishing him as the missing son to the Warring family. Walters falls in love with Warring's daughter Lucia and finds that the family attorney Glaxton is slowly poisoning the old man.

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.

The young Anselmus Aselmeyer fulfilled a long cherished dream: He travels to Venice, the city of his dreams. Once there, the porter Pipistrello directs him immediately to the hotel of his boss, and Anselmus lands in the middle of a wedding party. Mestre Mangiabene, a wealthy oilman, marries the beautiful but completely depleted Marchesina dei Bisognosi. But the secretly loves an officer.

Wanting his son to get away from his many girlfriends and buckle down to work, the New York industrialist father of a playboy sends him to an obscure village in Spain to find samples of a rare mineral. When the son gets to Spain, he runs afoul of the local police chief - who has a secret that he tries to keep the young man from discovering.

La Cassette de l'émigrée