The Dawn of Sound: How Movies Learned to Talk
★ 7 · 2007 · 85m · Documentary · History
Film historians, and survivors from the nearly 30-year struggle to bring sound to motion pictures take the audience from the early failed attempts by scientists and inventors, to the triumph of the talkies.
More Like This

Film-Tract n° 1968
1968 · ★ 6.5
In the 1968 movement in Paris, Jean-Luc Godard made a 16mm, 3-minute long film, Film-tract No.1968, Le Rouge, in collaboration with French artist Gérard Fromanger. Starting with the shot identifying its title written in red paint on the Le Monde for 31 July 1968, the film shows the process of making Fromanger’s poster image, which is thick red paint flows over a tri-color French flag. —Hye Young Min
More info →
Finlandia
1922 · ★ 4.3
A documentary from Erkki Karu, one of the earliest pioneers of Finnish cinema: This government-produced propaganda film introduces the nature, sports, military, agriculture and capital of Finland.
More info →
With Reindeer and Sled in Inka Länta’s Winterland
1926 · ★ 6
Everyday wintertime life of Sámi reindeer herder Inka Länta and her family, mingling authentic and fictionalized takes.
More info →
Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages
1916 · ★ 7.1
The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.
More info →
The Passion of Joan of Arc
1928 · ★ 8
A classic of the silent age, this film tells the story of the doomed but ultimately canonized 15th-century teenage warrior. On trial for claiming she'd spoken to God, Jeanne d'Arc is subjected to inhumane treatment and scare tactics at the hands of church court officials. Initially bullied into changing her story, Jeanne eventually opts for what she sees as the truth. Her punishment, a famously brutal execution, earns her perpetual martyrdom.
More info →
Battleship Potemkin
1925 · ★ 7.6
A dramatized account of a great Russian naval mutiny and a resultant public demonstration, showing support, which brought on a police massacre.
More info →
Nanook of the North
1922 · ★ 7.1
This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.
More info →
An Unforgettable Grudge
1926 · ★ 8.5
Set in the Edo period, the film deals with two brothers falling in love with the same girl. Sadly, only 12 minutes of footage survive.
More info →
Visions of Lourdes
1932 · ★ 7.4
Charles Dekeukeleire, then a questioning Catholic, was spurred into making this documentary on a pilgrimage with the Catholic Young Workers’ Movement. The director’s approach is one of critical reflection; A film emotional and fervent, even acerbic.
More info →
October (Ten Days that Shook the World)
1928 · ★ 6.9
Sergei M. Eisenstein's docu-drama about the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. Made ten years after the events and edited in Eisenstein's 'Soviet Montage' style, it re-enacts in celebratory terms several key scenes from the revolution.
More info →
The Birth of a Nation
1915 · ★ 6
Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie's congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.
More info →
A Trip to the Moon
1902 · ★ 7.9
Professor Barbenfouillis and five of his colleagues from the Academy of Astronomy travel to the Moon aboard a rocket propelled by a giant cannon. Once on the lunar surface, the bold explorers face the many perils hidden in the caves of the mysterious planet.
More info →