Silent Films

Silent Films RokuGuide Quick Look:

THIS CHANNEL IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE IN THE ROKU CHANNEL STORE

At launch (March 2013), this channel offered 126 videos, including full-length feature films as well as short promotional films and animations. You'll find stars like Charlie Chaplin (with nearly three dozen titles) and Douglas Fairbanks (nine titles) along with newsreel compilations and interesting shorts such as Duke Ellington playing jazz and early Technicolor films. Not all of the offerings are actually silent, but they are all from the earliest days of the film indusry.

Films are found in the following categories:

Dawn of Cinema
Comedies & Animation
Promotional & Propoganda
Silver Screen Classics
Charlie Chaplin
Buster Keaton
Douglas Fairbanks
Georges Méliès

The shorter films often offer background about the film, such as how the film came to be in the collection or the historical significance. For example, The Monkey Race (1909), is described as "Italian-made, is typical of hundreds of chase films produced in America, France and Italy between about 1904 and 1910, mostly for fairgrounds and vaudeville." We also learn about the film Fantasmagorie: "Using the technique of stop-motion photography pioneered in America by J. Stuart Blackton, Emile Cohl of France drew Fantasmagorie for the Gaumont Company in 1908. Arguably the first and certainly the most sophisticated cartoon until that time, its stream-of-conscious narrative remains impressive after a century."

Fans of silent films and Hollywood's Golden Era can find additional content of this period on the Roku channels Movie Vault and Pub-D-Hub.

-- Information is current as of March 23, 2013

Developer's Channel Description: The Silent Films channel is a collection of some of the best silent movies from the era of 1894 to 1929. Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks, Georges Méliès, and Charlie Chaplin are just a few of the names you will find in our silent catalogue.

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CHANNEL STORE CATEGORY: Movies & TV

DEVELOPER: The Digital Development Group, Corp

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