ABSTRACT
As a co-director and performer at the British Silent Film Festival (BSFF) since its inception in 1998, I have been privileged to witness not only the rediscovery of great movies from the silent period but also the huge strides in scholarly research that have thrown a muchneeded light onto the films, cinema practices and audiences of that time. The BSFF was set up after a particularly bruising reaction to the British season at Il Giornate del Cinema Muto festival of silent film in Pordenone, Italy. The accusation that British cinema was “no good” could not be countered when so much British output from the silent period had simply never been seen. It did not help that there had long been an assumption (somewhat fostered by British film historian Rachael Low) that British cinema led the world in enterprise and experimentation until 1906, after which its silent output consisted chiefly of dreary theatrical adaptations, only briefly illuminated by a wunderkind such as Hitchcock or Asquith.
