The Lincoln Cycle
Film Comment Selects
February 6 - 10, 2019
This remarkable series of 10 short silent dramas by John M. Stahl, produced by Benjamin Chapin as a vehicle for his performance as Abraham Lincoln, are structured entirely around memory and recollections of the past.
Live piano accompaniment by Donald Sosin
“A centerpiece of the 2018 Pordenone Silent Film Festival was a near-complete retrospective of the surviving silent films of John M. Stahl, starting with The Lincoln Cycle (1917), a series of 10 short films produced by Benjamin Chapin as a vehicle for his performance as Abraham Lincoln. Stahl received no on-screen credit from the egotistical Chapin, but credibly claimed throughout his career that he was the director. Structured entirely around memory and recollections of the past, these surprisingly sophisticated small dramas, eight of which survive, include flashbacks that recur with variations or changes in point of view, and even flashbacks-within-flashbacks.”—Imogen Sara Smith (Pordenone Silent Film Festival dispatch)
Screens in two parts with one intermission. (Please note: Episodes 1-7 and 10 will screen. Episodes 8 and 9 of The Lincoln Cycle are lost.)
Special thanks to Ira Resnick for his generous support of The Lincoln Cycle.
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