In the beginning...there was Fort Lee, New Jersey. Situated on the top of the Palisades cliffs, it was a natural fortress during the Revolutionary War, and where, in the start of the 1900s, the early cinema revolution rooted and shot up in and all around the New York/New Jersey landscape. One of the first cinema pioneers and a studio executive was Mark Dintenfass who founded the Champion Film Company in 1910. The Champion studio was built in the...
Dorothy Gibson was a 22 year old silent film star, having found a place in a lifeboat dressed in a sweater and coat over an evening gown on the night of April 14, 1912, the night Titanic sank. Lifeboat 7 was launched at 12:45 a.m. and remained near the sinking ship so it could be used in a rescue operation. By 2 a.m. it was obvious the majority of people scrambling on the decks of the Titianic would not survive. As the ship went down, two hours...
Quiet control in storytelling, Philippe Falardeau chose a situation in the first continuous scene when a beloved teacher is discovered having hanged herself in the classroom. Not wanting the students' backgrounds to become an issue in a story that had enough issues to contend with, his choice of images included a private school, the characters are middle class, dressed the same way and polite. It's either the story that works or it doesn't and...