World Bulletin/News Desk

The Ottoman Empire will return to life as a Turkish cinema festival screens the first silent movies ever shot in the powerful pre-World War I sultanate.

The ‘Istanbul Film Days’ festival – organized by Istanbul Sehir University, the Istanbul section of German film body Das Kino and hosted by Istanbul Modern – is presenting examples of silent film from the early days of cinema between October 9-12.

Officially supported by Cineteca di Bologna, one of the most important Italian film institutions, the silent movie exhibition is called ‘They Came Silently’ and marks the 100th anniversary of Turkish cinema.

Within the scope of the program called ‘Yeni Temasageran: Osmanli'dan Sinema Manzaralari’ (The New Audience: Film Scenes from the Ottoman Empire), many special film archives, such as newsreels and documentaries as well as fictional films shot in Ottoman lands in the early 20th century, will be shown.

‘Film Scenes from the Ottoman Empire’ will also exhibit images shot between 1902 and 1925 from north Africa to the Balkans as well as Anatolian cities like Izmir and Kars.

The festival opened on Thursday with ‘Sangue Bleu’ (Princess of Monte Cabello), a 1914 French drama about women in society a 100 years ago.

Another surprise of the festival is the 1938 film ‘Too Much Johnson’, long believed to be lost until 2013 when it was firstly publicly screened in U.S. after 75 years.

Besides ‘Sangue Bleu’ and ‘Too Much Johnson’, audiences will also have the chance to see 1914’s ‘Damned Be the War! / Maudite Soit La Guerre’ and ‘Charlie Chaplin at Keystone’, ‘Perils of the Pictures’, 1929’s ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari / Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari’ and 1925’s ‘Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life’.