Episode Details

Eva Hielscher, head of film-related collections at Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, selects a wholly international survey of 1911 films, jumping from country to country and genre to genre. This heterogeneous view of the year ranges from French comedy and animation experiment shorts to an Italian epic and German feature…and a document of a historic expedition!

Eva is also co-artistic director of the Bonn International Silent Film Festival. She is co-editor of The City Symphony Phenomenon: Cinema, Art, and Urban Modernity between the Wars and Color Mania – The Material of Color in Photography and Film.

Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your own top five for 1911!

Films and resource mentioned:

• Rosalie and Her Phonograph (1911) - Romeo Bosetti
• The Strange Bird (1911) - Urban Gad
• The Third Fram Expedition to the South Pole (1911) - Leon Amundsen
• L’Inferno (1911) - Francesco Bertolini, Giuseppe de Liguoro, and Adolfo Padovan
• Little Nemo (1911) - Winsor McCay and J. Stuart Blackton
• Rosalie and Léontine Go to the Theatre (1911) - Romeo Bosetti
• The Abyss (1910) - Urban Gad
• The Great White Silence (1924) - Herbert Ponting
• Atlantis (1913) - August Blom
• The Conquest of the Pole (1912) - Georges Méliès
• Sentimental Value (2025) - Joachim Trier
• Timeline of Historical Film Colors in Photography and Film