The silent film era was a time when the world of cinema and motion picture really underwent transformation and development. The success of the period was because of directors who courageously tried unheard of ways of filmmaking. Below are 5 from across the world.
1. Yasujiro Shimazu
He lived between 1897 and 1945, Japanese screenwriter and film director and a part of the Shoshimingeki genre creators before the Second World War. Most of his silent films since 1923 when he became a director were mostly concerned with Japanese middle class or Shoshimingeki. Famous directors in the Japanese film industry were his trainees, such as Keisuke Kinoshita and Kozaburo Yoshimura.
2. Loise Weber
She lived between 1881 and 1939 and the first female to hold the reigns of a director of a full-length motion picture. She worked as a director, producer and actress, with the first work she ever directed being the 1914’s Merchant of Venice. Her role in the American silent film was immortalized in the Hollywood walk of fame although she died childless and penniless at 58 years of age.
3. John G. Adolfi
Adolfi lived between 1888 and 1933 and a part from being a director in the American silent film realm, he was a screenwriter and actor, with his contribution seeing 100 plus productions. He died while hunting in Canada due to brain hemorrhage. He started his career in the film The Spy: Romantic Story of the Civil War as an actor.
4. Olga Ivanovna Preobrazhenskaya
Olga lived between 1881 and 1971 in Russia and had a successful career as a film director and actress and a part of the pioneers in world female film directing. She was a student in Moscow Art Theater before 1904 and started in the theater. Her debut as an actress was in the 1913 film, Key to Happiness. She was later involved in a huge number of silent films, both as an actress and director and founded the VGIK, an acting school.
5. Boris Barnet
Referred to as the tragicomic satire guru during his successful years in 1920s and 30s, he lived between 1902 and 1965 and was a student of the new Moscow Art School. His first film was a comedy staring the diva, Anna Sten, known as The Girl with the Hatbox. He was prone to alcohol and committed suicide. The House on Trubnaya,1928, a melodramatic film by Barnet was re-discover 80 years later and is one of the best classics in the silent film genre not only in Russia but globally.
2 
2 
100