Film historian Christopher Frayling talks to Joel Finler about the early Hollywood film-makers - including the Eastern Europeans Carl Laemmle, Adolph Zukor, and Louis B Mayer - as depicted in the National Theatre play, Travelling Light. This is an archive recording of a live Platform event from April 2012.

Creating Video Projection in Travelling Light

In a remote village in Eastern Europe, around 1900, the young Motl Mendl is entranced by the flickering silent images on his father’s cinematograph. Bankrolled by Jacob, the ebullient local timber merchant, and inspired by Anna, the girl sent to help him make moving pictures of their village, he stumbles on a revolutionary way of story-telling. Forty years on, Motl – now a famed American film director – looks back on his early life and confronts the cost of fulfilling his dreams. The National Theatre's 2012 production of Travelling Light was directed by Nicholas Hytner and starred Antony Sher.