Kevin Brownlow: Giving silent movies a voice

KEVIN Brownlow is the Indiana Jones of the cinema world. Over the course of a six-decade obsession with silent movies, he has scoured the globe in the quest for lost gems of silent cinema. When there were still silent era movers and shakers alive, he tracked them down and gave them a voice. He has restored and resurrected some of the greatest films to emerge from the 1910s and 1920s. His services to cinema have earned him many plaudits but none as prestigious as the honorary lifetime achievement Academy Award with which he was presented at the 2010 Oscars.