O MIMI SAN (Charles Miller, US 1914, 20 min.)

THE DEVIL’S CLAIM (Charles Swickard, US 1920, 60 min.)

The great Japanese performer Sessue Hayakawa stars in this pair of unusual silent-era melodramas. In O Mimi San, the actor’s first movie, he plays a prince torn between love and duty to his nation. The Devil’s Claim features Hayakawa in a dual role as a turban-wearing writer in love with Persian damsel Colleen Moore, and the possessed-by-an-evil-spirit main character in the writer’s serial story. Live piano by Philip C. Carli.