So Near, Yet So Far

The whole world knows him. Burlesque comedy genius, popular actor, author, director, producer, composer, choreographer, Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) used his talent to serve an ideal of justice and freedom. But his best scenario was his own destiny, a story written into the political and artistic history of the 20th century.

Geoffrey Tempest is desperately in love with aspiring writer Mavis Claire, a tenant of his boardinghouse. Unable to marry her due to his poverty, in his anger, he curses God for abandoning him. Soon, Geoffrey meets Prince Lucio de Rimanez, a wealthy, urbane gentleman who informs Geoffrey that he's inherited a fortune, but that he must place himself in the Prince's hands in order to enjoy the fruits of his inheritance. What Geoffrey doesn't know is that Prince Lucio is actually Satan.

The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.

A naïve country girl is tricked into a sham marriage by a wealthy womanizer, then must rebuild her life despite the taint of having borne a child out of wedlock.

A frail waif, abused by her brutal boxer father in London's seedy Limehouse District, is befriended by a sensitive Chinese immigrant with tragic consequences.

John Logan leaves bucolic Happy Valley to make his fortune in the city. His parents and his sweetheart become miserable and beleaguered in his absence, but after several years he returns wealthy. However, his embittered father, not recognizing him for who he is, plans to murder the newly-arrived 'stranger' for his money.

France, on the eve of the French Revolution. Henriette and Louise have been raised together as sisters. When the plague that takes their parents' lives causes Louise's blindness, they decide to travel to Paris in search of a cure, but they separate when a lustful aristocrat crosses their path.

A beautiful singer and a battling priest try to reform a Barbary Coast saloon owner in the days before the great earthquake and subsequent fires in 1906.

In an attempt to brand himself as a serious actor, the smiling swashbuckler Douglas Fairbanks starred in THE HALF-BREED (1916), a Western melodrama written by Anita Loos and directed with flair by Allan Dwan. Fairbanks stars as Lo Dorman, who has been ostracized from society because of this mixed ethnicity - his Native American mother was abandoned by his white father. When Lo catches the eye of the rich white debutante Nellie (Jewel Carmen), he becomes a target for the racist Sheriff Dunn (Sam De Grasse), who wants to break them up and take Nelli for his own. This love triangle becomes a quadrangle with the arrival of Teresa (Alma Rubens), who is on the run from the law. Through fire and fury Lo must decide who and what he truly loves.

The King of Kings is the Greatest Story Ever Told as only Cecil B. DeMille could tell it. In 1927, working with one of the biggest budgets in Hollywood history, DeMille spun the life and Passion of Christ into a silent-era blockbuster. Featuring text drawn directly from the Bible, a cast of thousands, and the great showman’s singular cinematic bag of tricks, The King of Kings is at once spectacular and deeply reverent—part Gospel, part Technicolor epic.

Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie's congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.

Two young girls are sent away to live with their uncle, which sets off a chain of events resulting in an Indian attack on the town.

Double Trouble is a 1915 American silent romantic comedy film written and directed by Christy Cabanne and stars Douglas Fairbanks in his third motion picture. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Herbert Quick. A print of the film is held by the Cohen Media Group.

A teenage orphan (who believes herself to be "hoodooed") is taken in by a childless couple and quickly falls for the boy next door; Her luck seems to have changed. But the idyll is broken up after a trip to the movies-- It seems the 'hoodoo' has returned after she tries to replicate what she'd seen on the screen.

An episodic dramatization of the 18th President of the United States' life, including his early years, affair with Ann Rutledge, courtship of Mary Todd, debates with Stephen A. Douglas, the election of 1860, his presidency during the Civil War, and finally his assassination at Ford's Theater in 1865.

During the American Revolution, a young soldier carrying a crucial message to General Washington is spotted and pursued by a group of enemy soldiers. He takes refuge with a civilian family, but is soon detected. The family and their neighbors must then make plans to see that the important message gets through after all.