Described by director Dziga Vertov as an experiment in the language of pure cinema, "The Man With the Movie Camera" is perhaps the most dazzling and sophisticated, not only of Soviet, but of world silent cinema. Music by the Alloy Orchestra.

This milestone film, known for its expressionistic sets and techniques, tells the strange tale of a sleepwalker under the spell of the mysterious and evil Dr. Caligari.

siegfried establishes larger than life heroic characters who are defined by tests of valor & rigid codes of honot. kriemhilds revenge begins after the death of siegfried & weaves the treacherous tale of his widows ungodly vengeance upon his murderers. Studio: Kino International Release Date: 11/09/2004 Starring: Paul Ritcher Hanna Ralph Run time: 291 minutes Rating: Nr Director: Fritz Lang

A legendary seven-hour silent crime serial in ten episodes. "Les Vampires" follows the exploits of a brazen and resourceful band of arch-criminals who rob the rich, transfix the elite of France, and almost elude the obsessive pursuit of crusading journalist Phillipe Guerande and his sidekick Mazamette. A series of Grand Vampires with names such as Satanas and Venomous share the irresistible Irma Vep (an anagram of "vampire") as strategist and mistress. Sometimes seductively garbed in a black body stocking and a black hood, sometimes disguised as a boy or hidden in plain view as a maid, stenographer or bourgeois spinster, feared and desired by both her cohorts and stalkers, Irma is perhaps the first liberated screen woman. Shot off-the-cuff by writer-director Louis Feuillade in the streets and interiors of 1915 Paris, "Les Vampires" was banned by the Paris police for glorifying crime. A smash hit when finally released, and for fifty years celebrated as a masterpiece of French cinema, "Les Vampires" is complete and restored, with English titles and inserts, tints and an evocative orchestral score.

Russian director Sergei Eisenstein's powerful retelling of the 1917 Russian Revolution, "October" is an acknowledged masterpiece in the use of editing, lighting, camera placement and mise-en-scene. An absolute must for any film connoisseurs collection.

Sergei Eisenstein's "Strike," with Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane," mark the most outstanding cinematic debuts in the history of film. Triggered by the suicide of a worker unjustly accused of theft, a strike is called by the laborers of a Moscow factory. The managers, owner and the Czarist government dispatch infiltrators in an attempt to break the workers unity. Unsuccessful, they hire the police and, in the film's most harrowing and powerful sequences, the unarmed strikers are slaughtered in a brutal confrontation. This edition of "Strike" is digitally remastered from a mint-condition 35mm print made from the original camera negative and features new digital stereo music composed and performed by the Alloy Orchestra.

This beautiful gothic fantasy was inspired by a childhood dream of its writer/director, Fritz Lang, who first gained world recognition with this film's triumph. "Destiny" is the story of a young man taken by Death just as he is to be married. His lover makes a deal with the Death figure--if she can save one of three possible lives, her fiance will be returned to her. Otherworldly atmosphere is created by extraordinary, bizarre sets, gothic lighting, and eccentric characters combined with spectacle and camera trickery astonishing for its time. With its many magical and haunting images, "Destiny" still possesses real power to impress the imagination!

Inspired by grand opera and Italy's imperialist victory in the Libyan War (1911-12), the Italian movie industry produced dozens of historical epics in the period just before World War I. The most influential and successful of these was Cabiria, the visually spectacular film which set the standard for the big-budget feature-length movies around the world and opened the way for D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. De Mille. The story concerns a girl-Cabiria-who is separated from her parents during the Punic Wars in the Third Century B.C. In her odyssey through the world of ancient Rome, she encounters the eruption of Mt. Etna, capture by pirates, the barbaric splendor of Carthage, human sacrifice and Hannibal crossing the Alps. With meticulous care given to costume and set design, Cabiria was shot in North Africa, Sicily and the Italian Alps.

Russian director Vsevolod I. Pudovkin's "Mother" is the chronicle of an individual's transformation from political naivete to Marxist awareness set during the 1905 Russian Revolution. Pudovkin uses innovative montage techniques and camera angles to tell this bold story of national unrest through the eyes of a working class woman.

A relic certainly, but a fascinating one, Der Golem is perhaps the screen's first great monster movie. Though it was actually the third time director-star Paul Wegener had played the eponymous creation, the earlier efforts (sadly lost) were rough drafts for this elaborate dramatization of the Jewish legend. When the Emperor decrees that the Jews of mediaeval Prague should be evicted from the ghetto, a mystical rabbi creates a clay giant and summons the demon Astaroth who breathes out in smoky letters the magic word that will animate the golem. Intended as a protector and avenger, the golem is twisted by the machinations of a lovelorn assistant and, like many a monster to come, runs riot, terrorizing guilty and innocent alike until a little girl innocently ends his rampage. Wegener's golem is an impressively solid figure, the Frankenstein monster with a slightly comical clay wig. The wonderfully grotesque Prague sets and the alchemical atmosphere remain potent. --Kim Newman