by Steve Massa (Author)
Marcel Perez: The International Mirth-Maker examines the life and career of perhaps the best silent film comedian whom no one's ever heard of.
One of the founding fathers of film comedy whose career spanned the silent era as a comic, director, and writer, Marcel Perez is a missing link between the early European and American cinemas, and in the book author Steve Massa follows his work, and also explores the very beginnings of film comedy. Tracking Perez's career through industry trade journals and film fragments from archives all over the world, Massa also includes a detailed filmography and lavishly illustrates with more that 50 rare photographs.
Be sure to look for The Marcel Perez Collection DVD from Undercrank Productions, available on Amazon.com. The DVD contains 10 rare Perez comedies - 5 made in Italy (preserved by EYE Filmmuseum, Netherlands) and 5 made in the USA (preserved by the Library of Congress), seen in new digital transfers with new musical scores by Ben Model.
Author Biography
STEVE MASSA is the author of "Lame Brains and Lunatics: The Good, The Bad, and The Forgotten of Silent Comedy", and has organized comedy film programs for the Museum of Modern Art, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Pordenone Silent Film Festival. In addition to consulting with the EYE Filmmuseum, Netherlands and other archives, and writing for journals such as Griffithiana, he is a founding member of Silent Cinema Presentations which produces NYC's Silent Clowns Film Series. Steve has also contributed articles and commentary tracks to many DVD collections such as "The Forgotten Films of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle", "Harry Langdon: Lost and Found", and Kino Lorber's "Buster Keaton: The Short Films Collection", and Undercrank Productions' "The Mishaps of Musty Suffer".