Compilation of film clips from 1905-1915, found footage of silent movies and documentaries from the Jean Desmet Archive of the Netherlands Film Museum. Jean Desmet was one of the first Dutch film distributors. Lyrisch nitraat is a tribute to the craftsmanship of early filmmakers, but also shows the brittleness of old nitrate films. Composed as an opera about love and death, set to music by Bizet, Masek and Puccini.

Lyrical Nitrate

1931: in Ireland, a film maker hears of an aged ship's carpenter who knows the fate of the Hollandia, a Norse ship that set sail in 1905 and vanished. The old salt has canisters of film to prove his tale. We see the footage as he narrates. They sail south in June, 1905, with scores of Siberian huskies aboard, meeting no living soul, the crew ignorant of the trip's purpose, until they reach Antarctica. A mysterious Italian paces the deck; a polar bear appears, and the Italian, possessed, hunts it down. That night, the boatswain explains to the crew how an Arctic bear could be at the South Pole and why the Hollandia has come. Visitors arrive, and the Gothic tale plays out.

The Forbidden Quest

Part of the series made for VPRO TV comprising films from the silent era. This part is a compilation of short films restored by the Netherlands Film Museum from the period 1897 to 1899. They were made by the Biograph & Mutoscope Company in Holland and abroad. The films were shot on the 68mm format that soon went out of fashion.

Cinema Perdu - The First Thirty Years of Film

Tragic love story about the photographer and explorer Felice Beato who travelled back to Japan in 1895 to seek his former wife O-Kiku. On the way he describes in a nostalgic letter to his brother how much he yearns for his lost love O-Kiku and how impotent he feels in an ancient Japan subject to rapid change. The journey takes him to Nagasaki and Moji, Onomichi, Mount Fuji, Yokohama and Tokyo. Places he once visited with his beloved and where he now no longer understands the people. Felice...Felice... is inspired by hand-coloured nineteenth century photos taken by e.g. Felice Beato, Sjimooka Renjo and Baron von Stilfried. In this film, shot entirely in a studio, the photos depict Felice's journey. Awarded the Golden Calf for Best Feature film in 1998. (NFF)

Felice… Felice…

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.