The Toronto Silent Film Festival has found a novel, tech-savvy way to market the old-timey medium: It ha turned its Instagram feed into a multimedia timeline about the history of silent film.
The festival accomplished this by somewhat literally turning Instagram on its ear. Instagram is designed for vertical scrolling. Users typically view Intsgram photos and videos by swiping up and down on their phones. So in order to mimic the feel of a timeline, the Toronto Film Festival, TSFF2014 on Instagram, rotated all of its images and videos 90 degrees clockwise and instructed visitors to turn their phones sideways and scroll horizontally. The project was completed last week and attracted more than 1,500 followers as of Monday afternoon.
It’s an inventive use of Instagram, especially considering the film festival’s website is relatively crude. The festival kicks off on Apr. 3 with a showing of “The Wind” (1928).
Videos of silent film legend Charlie Chaplin are sprinkled throughout the timeline. While there’s no need for headphones when viewing the timeline on Instagram’s mobile app, the video below does include sound.
More in Media
Here are the biggest moments in AI for publishers in 2025
Here are some of the moments that defined how publishers adapted to the AI era this year.
Digiday+ Research roundup: Gen Z news consumption and diversification in the DSP space were 2025’s top trends
As 2025 winds down, we rounded up the biggest trends of the year, based on the data that resonated the most with Digiday’s readers.
What publishers are wishing for this holiday season: End AI scraping and determine AI-powered audience value
Publishers want a fair, structured, regulated AI environment and they also want to define what the next decade of audience metrics looks like.