Now you can watch my last film, "The mystery of the King of Kinema", a documentary about silent film pioneer Max Linder and his daughter, Maud, in FILMIN. The movie won the Special Mention of the Jury in the Gijon International Film Festival.
Synopsis
The film tells the story of a man and his daughter. Max Linder was the first movie star. He was known as "The King of Kinema". He was forgotten after his death, and his films lost. Maud Linder was his daughter. For 80 years she struggled to find the films her father made and to recover his legacy. Maud passed away last october 2017.
About the film
Maud Linder is quite a fascinating person. Because of what she is, and because she is the daughter of Max Linder. One of the most successful comic actors of the silent film era, Max Linder starred in more than two hundred films, most of which he wrote and directed himself. In 1912, he was the highest paid actor in the world, earning an astonishing one million francs that year. Max developed one of the most memorable presences the cinema had known in its short history and was worldwide famous. Pathe gave their most famous star the unique title of “The King of Kinema”.
Linder influenced everyone from Mack Sennett, Stan Laurel, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chase and Charlie Chaplin to Fatty Arbuckle, Abbot and Costello, the Marx Bros or The Three Stooges. Chaplin wrote, as a dedication on a photo: “For the unique Max, the great master—his student Charles Chaplin.” But Max Linder failed to really conquer America. We have discovered some lost Max Linder films, and proved that some of his “disciples” copied, rather than borrowed, entire fragments of his works.
The War came and killed the European hegemony in motion pictures. And Max suffered mental sequels of his war experiences. As a possible consequence, Max Linder and his young wife killed themselves in 1924.
Now Max Linder is sadly forgotten. Many of his films have been lost forever, but Maud, now 89, has dedicated her life to rescuing her father's oeuvre. A lifetime struggle and an inexplicable love for a father who left her without parents when she was 15 months old. This film tells the story of Maud and of Max, and the story of the love/hate relationship of a daughter with the long lost father she never met. Through a rich visual edit and fascinating narration told by many voices (Maud Linder, Jean-Claude Carriére, film historians, fans, psychologists, and... Max Linder himself) we'll try to throw light on this mysterious tragedy. The Max Linder mystery.
The Mystery of the King of Kinema.
(Written by Margaret Nicoll, Executive Producer, from her introduction about the film)
...But the festival has much more to offer, from workshops with filmmakers to sections dedicated to local productions. In fact, one of the best films shown in Las Palmas this year was directed by local director Elio Quiroga, an astonishing documentary about the legendary French comedian and silent-era pioneer Max Linder, The Mystery of the King of Kinema, which was shot all over the world but funded in the Canary Islands, starring his only daughter, Maud Linder.
(Gabriel Lerman, Golden Globes member, writing about the film, when in competition in the Las Palmas International Film Festival)
Note: FILMIN works in Spain and Portugal territories only. The film is in its original version: English with subtitles in Spanish.
