“Between 1909 and 1911, the number of films that Stacia embellishes with her charming sinuous pretty persona is difficult to calculate: about 20 are confirmed, many more if we want to trust the information provided by Sadoul, Mitry or Charles Ford, who often mention titles which, however, do not find any objective corroboration in the Pathé catalogues or in the chronicles of the time.” These are the words of film historians Henri Bousquet and Vittorio Martinelli in a seminal article published in 1988 in the Italian magazine “Immagine”, devoted to the great French actress and dancer Stacia Napierkowska. Thanks to recently identified unique prints from the Gosfil’mofond of Russia, this programme makes a further step towards a more accurate filmography of Napierkowska, who was sometimes mistakenly credited in the place of other similarly slender Pathé stock actresses, such as Léontine Massart and especially Jane Renouardt. Moreover, it also offers the audience the possibility to watch some long-thought-lost Pathé titles and never-before-seen performances of the great French dancer.
“In an era in which women with opulent complexions are in fashion, and who seem to emerge from Renoir’s canvases, the nervous and quick body [of Napierkowska], as a young Arab girl, subtly androgynous, albeit   wrapped in precious oriental brocades, exudes an irresistible smell that enchants the audiences.” Both the legendary Capellani-Napierkowska film La Danseuse de Siva and the Bible-based Ruth and Boaz perfectly embody above description (again by Bousquet and Martinelli) while Le tragique amour de Mona Lisa, based on a script by Abel Gance, is actually a non-Napierkowska film (even though she has often been credited as playing in it).
With the exception of the fragment of La Complice, the films originally belonged to Sergey Ivanovich Osipov and were donated to the Gosfil’mofond archive in 1967. Osipov was a cinema owner and distributor, for a short time a partner of the important distribution company Thieman, Reinhardt & Osipov before the 1917 revolution.

Tamara Shvediuk