The scathing black comedy offers up bitterness and grotesquery but also a revealing, and complicated, look at the end of the silent era

As a new DVD shows, in rare and innovative early adaptations of the Bard on film – even when condensed – you don’t need to hear the words to feel the quality

From the beautiful Coeur Fidèle to a perfectly restored 1899 film projector, the city’s festival of rediscovered gems induced strained necks and gasps of delight

Her charm and energy made her the ultimate ‘flapper’ – but despite her success, Bow would forever be snubbed by the industry’s in-crowd

The story of the groundbreaking director behind today’s Google doodle and how her fairytale-inspired work made her one of the most important early women in the film industry

Capturing early 20th century New York – and all the glamour, danger and alienation it contained – Paul Strand set the foundations for a skyscraping subgenre: the city symphony

While the film industry still struggles with gender inequality today, the history of early and silent cinema is filled with female producers, directors and writers

If you’re expecting to see women tied to train tracks or actors running around making fast jerky movements when you watch a silent film, think again

The symbiotic relationship between film studios and fan magazines ensured the cinema-going public was fed a diet of Hollywood glamour and celebrity gossip

The writer of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was an extraordinary, barbed genius of the silent era, Hollywood and Broadway

Natan was deported to Auschwitz after the studio he owned went bankrupt, and his reputation was destroyed with accusations of pornography and fraud. He deserves to be remembered for more than these untruths

Even at the most highbrow screenings an audience can chortle, and it seems heartless. But it doesn’t necessarily mean they are being disrespectful

It’s time for a reappraisal of the movie star who swashbuckled in Zorro, duelled exuberantly in Robin Hood and soared in The Thief of Bagdad

The BFI’s new film collection sees cross-dressing comedies join anti-feminist propaganda and the newsreel of Emily Davison’s death

Shooting Stars, Anthony Asquith’s sharp-edged 1928 satire of the film industry, proves the lure of the behind-the-cameras drama is almost as old as cinema itself