Paolo Cherchi Usai is senior curator of the Motion Picture department at George Eastman House in Rochester, USA and Associate Professor of Film at the University of Rochester, USA. He is co-founder of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival and Domitor (Society of Early Cinema Studies), and Director of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation. A revised and expanded version of his book Burning Passions: An Introduction to the Study of Silent Cinema (1994) is forthcoming from BFI Publishing.