Last year, I spent a series of Saturday mornings running to the Music Box Theatre in Chicago to catch the 15-episode documentary, THE STORY OF FILM.
Turner Classic Movies starts airing the series tonight (Monday, September 2), and if you’re a film fan, I highly recommend it. You’ll end up with some insights, film trivia for cocktail parties (like the first movie close-up featured a kitty!!!), and a long, long list of movies to watch. I especially enjoyed the first episodes and will always be thankful for Mark Cousins, the film historian who created the series, for introducing me to Asta Nielsen’s insane erotic dance from the 1910 silent movie, The Abyss.
If you are so inclined, I did a series of blog posts about THE STORY OF FILM documentary. Check them out at http://wp.me/pfwMd-1sL
And take a look at Asta’s fabulous dance.
Gloria Bowman 
That sounds very interesting. Thanks for sharing!
You’re most welcome.
I don’t know whether “The Story of Film” touched on this, but I became intrigued with “High Treason 1929”, especially the sound version recently restored. In looking for more information, I stumbled on your meaty review of this film. Do you know whether (and where) a copy of the sound version is available? The silent does seem to be on you-tube. Thanks.
I saw the sound version of High Treason at a screening by the Chicago Film Society. I’ll check with them and see if they have any insights on where you can find a copy. Cheers!
Great! We have a group of friends over once a month who are film buffs. Could this be a somewhat Lysistrata type of story? It may be a good one to show after “Just Imagine” of 1930.
I just heard back from Kyle Westphal at the Chicago Film Society. Here’s what he wrote about HIGH TREASON: “The sound version of HIGH TREASON came from the Library of Congress. I do not know if they have digitized it yet, or made any plans to make it available commercially. But it’s available in 35mm for any theater with archival change-over projection. I think we were the first ones (outside of LoC) to actually screen that print publicly–and we only knew about it because the sound restoration was discussed at a conference of ARSC, the Association of Recorded Sound Collections.”
So…for the time being, you’re out of luck. I haven’t seen Just Imagine — will be checking it out.
In the meantime, if you’re on Facebook, you might want to join the Home Projectionist group “What Are You Watching?” A lot of interesting films come up!