Francesca Bertini

The epic tale of a class struggle in twentieth century Italy, as seen through the eyes of two childhood friends on opposing sides.

Young Cabiria is kidnapped by pirates and sold as a slave in Carthage. Just as she's to be sacrificed to Moloch, Cabiria is rescued by Fulvius Axilla, a good-hearted Roman spy, and his powerful slave, Maciste. The trio are broken up as Cabiria is entrusted to a woman of noble birth. With Cabiria's fate unknown, Maciste punished for his heroism, and Fulvius sent away to fight for Rome, is there any hope of our heroes reuniting?

Raymonde (Bertini) has had a passionate affair with Giacomo (Giorgio Bonaiti) and has a son with him. Life has taken a different turn, however, and Giacomo has married Elena (Mary Fleuron).

Hand-tinted Italian verison of the Shakespeare Classic King Lear.

Assunta and Michele are in love, but others come between them and jealousy arises. Assunta Spina stands out as an early landmark of naturalistic acting and a blueprint for the Italian Neorealist films to come.

In this mesmerizing collage of silent Italian melodrama, found-footage filmmaker Peter Delpeut (Lyrical Nitrate) affectionately captures the spirit of the World War One-era cinema diva. In all-but-lost gems such as La donna nuda (1914), and Tigre reale (1916), superstars such as Lyda Borelli and Pina Menichelli portrayed heroines teetering dangerously between defiant indulgence in sexual passion and hysterical remorse at their own cruelties. Delpeut’s inventive celebration of Black Romanticism is both striking and heartbreaking in its composition—a beautifully woven narrative of tempted fate and self-torment, elegantly guided by Loek Dikker’s original score. Zeitgeist Films is proud to present Delpeut’s stunningly experimental work in all its heaving bosomed, luridly tinted glory.

La Possession is a 1929 French film directed by Léonce Perret.

Based on Oscar Wilde's namesake drama. While praying, John the Baptist is captured and taken to Herod's palace, where he's locked in an underground prison. Herode desires Salome, but she has become infatuated with John. When he rejects her, Salome promises revenge. At Herod's feast, she demands John's head, which is brought to her. Herod then orders his soldiers to kill Salome as well.

A film based on the drama of the same name by Antonio Gutiérrez, which formed the basis for Giuseppe Verdi's famous opera Il Trovatore. Count di Luna gives his sons identical medallions so that they can always find each other. Separated by fate for many years, they meet again when they both seek the hand of the same girl.

La Signora delle Camelie chronicles the tragic love story of courtesan Marguerite Gautier and provincial bourgeois Armand Duval. Armand’s father disapproves of the relationship and convinces Marguerite to leave Armand, making him believe that she has left him for another man.

The Princess of Monte Cabello is divorced and is granted custody of her beloved daughter. Her ex-husband's mistress hires private detectives who take seemingly incriminating photographs of the Princess with the actor Jacques Wilson. The Princess is devastated when these cause her daughter to be taken from her, and the Princess then falls into the clutches of Wilson. In order to pay his gambling debts, Wilson forces her to humiliate herself by appearing in a play. The Princess sends a note to the Prince of Monte Cabello saying that after the first performance she will not compromise his name again.

One evening at a ball, Count Georg de Clermont-Latour—a man who places great importance on convention and traditional notions of honor—surprises a young man in his wife Odette’s bedchamber. Despite her protestations that she had rebuffed the presumptuous youth and behaved with neither impropriety nor infidelity, her husband refuses to believe a word she says and casts her out of his home.

The Clemenceau Affair (Italian: Il processo Clémenceau) is a 1917 silent Italian adventure film directed by Alfredo De Antoni. The film features the first onscreen performance from Vittorio De Sica.

An Italian melodrama. Only the final reel survives.

The 1912 Italian version of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet.

With a friend desperate for money, a merchant takes out a loan from a ruthless money-lender. Confident that his ships will soon be bringing him great wealth, the merchant willingly agrees to conditions of the loan that put him at great personal risk.

A former silent film actor who has saved old movies of his time from destruction uses them to set up recreational performances at schools. After an accidental fire and the risk of prison, he meets a rich producer who helps him to build a film museum.

The actress Francesca Bertini, as every diva worthy of her name, always arrives on the set extremely late. One day, in the studio, she happened to hear a colleague actor who, back from the front, tells about the brutalities suffered by the civilians in the occupied territories. At night, still troubled by that story, Bertini falls asleep and dreams: in her dream she plays the role of Mariute, a young Friulian countrywoman, mother of three kids waiting for her husband homecoming from the frontline. One day, while she is going to the well for water, she is assaulted and molested by three enemy soldiers. Her father-in-law will avenge her. In the meantime Bertini, waking up with a start, will arrive to work on time and she will end the film inviting the public to put their savings into the war bonds.

A lieutenant of the French navy, ready to kill himself in despair, renounces his project after spending a night with a beautiful stranger, the Princess of Lystrie.

A woman from Czechoslovakia escapes her homeland after the occupation by the armies of Warsaw pact to Italy to tell the tale...

A example of female fantasy is L'Histoire d'un Pierrot (1913), based on a musical pantomime by Mario Costa with Francesca Bertini in the role of Pierrot and Leda Gys as Louisette. The young and naive Pierrot is led astray by the evil wine merchant Pochinet (Emilio Ghione). He hopes to distract Pierrot with drinking and gambling while he tries to seduce Louisette.

Silent adventure film in which a horse riding woman has to save her husband from prison in a enemy country.

Ivonne is a vulgar, loose, promiscuous and a passionate danseuse at the tavern. Countess Edith is an angelic creature, exquisitely elegant, a finite and aristocratic heiress. Two sides of a woman with a split personality.