Pordenone Silent Film Festival

For strictly tourist purposes, Pordenone doesn't have much to offer. It's in a convenient location - Venice and Trieste are easily accessible by train - but apart from the city's original center, the place is modern and featureless.

Every October, though, Pordenone is heaven for lovers of silent film. Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (The Silent Film Festival) has been held there every year since the early 1980s. It started small and got big. The festival is attended by historians, film professors, documentarists, archivists, preservationists, businesspeople who deal in silent film, and others who have a real passion for the medium.

The range is breathtaking. Every year, the festival manages to come up with something new, something once thought lost. Every year, people from around the world flock to Pordenone, filling the hotels and the screening rooms, to get a sight of the latest offerings. The festival receives some funding from the Italian government, and has several contractual partners, so the cost is low. 30 euros buys you entrance to all the films except the two special screenings, for which you have to buy a ticket. You receive a folder full of information, a catalog of all the films being shown at the festival (complete with articles and synopses of the films), a program, free Internet access (both Wi-Fi and via computers provided by the Giornate), advice, help with lodging, and a hell of a good time.

The movies are shown all day, for eight days straight. Not surprisingly, this leads to extreme sleepiness fairly early in the game, and the films are often punctuated by the sound of a loud snore somewhere in the audience, followed by a ripple of laughter. I'm still waiting to hear a really good, loud, chainsaw-style snore.

Most of the films can't be seen anywhere else. The Giornate deals with the Library of Congress, various film archives, and private collectors to get the films for its program. Some classics are shown, often with a live orchestra (these are the "special screenings" mentioned above). Most, though, are films thought to have been lost, or films of whose existence no one knew, until they were brought to light.

Live music accompanies all the movies; piano, violin, full orchestra, and this year, a harp. The musicians are incredible. They make it up as they go along, never having seen the films before. They do this every day at the festival, and some of them do it year-round. The scores always fit, too. Someone remarked after one screening this year, that he wished the live score had been taped for the film; he couldn't imagine any other score being put on it.

We get together and talk. We talk about the movies we've seen, the ones we're going to see, and the ones we missed because we had to make the difficult decision between two movies that were being shown at the same time, in two different locations. We grab bites in between screenings, stay up late, get up early, and repeat the process throughout the festival. Sometimes, as I mentioned above, we fall asleep. Actually, we always fall asleep. Everyone I know has at least one movie nap during the Giornate.

I've met many a fascinating person there, and when I go back, I can see all my festfriends again. For most of them, this is the only chance we have to see each other. There's nothing like getting together with a group of people who have a shared interest; in this case, the interest being somewhat less than common, it means all the more to me, and I think it does to them, too.