Now in its 20th anniversary year, the One Hundred Years Ago section continues its annual exploration of a single year in cinema’s rich and varied history with a selection of enduring classics and archival rarities as well as thought-provoking documentaries from 1923.

This year we turn our attention to the exiled Russian filmmakers working at the studio Films Albatros in France, the birth of the western as a serious genre in Hollywood, the pinnacle of expressionist cinema in Germany, and the last embers of the diva film genre in Italy. Newsreel footage of the time, meanwhile, preserves major events for posterity on film, such as the Great Kantō earthquake devastating Tokyo or the discovery of Tut-Ankh-Amun’s tomb. The majority of the films in the programme will be screened on 35mm, but we will also present a handful of new digital restorations.

Read the selection of films curated by Oliver Hanley.