Articles tagged San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Four NFPF-Preserved Films Unspooling at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival
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| Norma Shearer going mad in Man and Wife (1923), preserved by UCLA Film & Television Archive. |
Next week the 26th installment of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival opens in San Francisco’s Castro Theatre. Four of the films have been preserved through grants administered by the National Film Preservation Foundation.
On Thursday, July 13, Doll Messengers of Friendship (1929) will screen during the free “Amazing Tales from the Archives” program. This short film commemorates a doll exchange between the U.S. and Japan that was initiated by the Committee on World Friendship Among Children. 58 dolls commissioned by the Japanese government from master doll makers toured the U.S. and were acclaimed as works of art. Doll Messengers of Friendship was screened at the local doll exchange ceremonies that comprised the tour. The surviving 9-minute … Read more
Go “Below the Surface” at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival!
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| Below the Surface (1920). |
After a two-year break the San Francisco Silent Film Festival roars back to life on May 5th. This 25th anniversary edition lasts until May 11 and is jam-packed with films. Among these treasures is Below the Surface (1920), preserved by the Festival through the support of the National Film Preservation Foundation. The premiere of the restoration occurs on Friday, May 6, at 2pm, and we hope you can make it.
Below the Surface was the follow-up to the notorious revenge melodrama Behind the Door (1919). It reunites producer Thomas Ince, director Irvin Willat, star Hobart Bosworth, and cinematographer J.O. Taylor (later to film King Kong). Both films have action aboard submarines and a macabre shipboard denouement. In Below the Surface Bosworth plays a diver in small-town Maine who’s assisted by his loyal son (Lloyd Hughes). Their relationship is … Read more
“Amazing Tales from the Archives” at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival
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| Vice takes its toll in Opium (1919). |
On Thursday, May 2, the National Film Preservation Foundation will co-present “Amazing Tales from the Archives” at the San Francisco Silent Festival. This free lecture program, begun in 2006, features archivists from around the world presenting field reports on new and exciting preservation projects. This year audiences will enjoy four presentations from leading film preservationists and scholars.
Starting from the formative years of cinema, researcher Thierry Lecointe and SFSFF President Robert Byrne will reveal cinematic discoveries from turn-of-the-century flipbooks. Next, Munich Filmmuseum director Stefan Drössler will guide the audience through the restoration of Opium (1919). Directed by Robert Reinert and starring Werner Krauss and Conrad Veidt, this exotic, hallucinatory tale of addiction and betrayal among doctors … Read more
"Soft Shoes" at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Starting May 30th the San Francisco Silent Film Festival will celebrate its 20th anniversary with five days of programs showcasing silent classics from around the world. The NFPF is honored to have played a part in the celebration by supporting the preservation of Soft Shoes (1925), which screens May 31 with live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin.
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| "Harry Carey is willing to risk an eye as Lillian Rich adjusts her stocking" in Soft Shoes (1925). Photo and text from Exhibitor’s Trade Review, March 14, 1925. |
Directed by Lloyd Ingraham and photographed by Sol Polito, Soft Shoes was part of a series of Westerns produced by Hunt Stromberg and starring Harry Carey. Set in 1925, the semi-comedic story involves small-town western sheriff Pat Halahan (Carey) visiting San Francisco and apprehending the alluring burglar Faith O’Day (Lillian Rich), who had attempted to rob his hotel room. … Read more
The San Francisco Silent Film Festival Returns
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| Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema, from EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. |
This week is graced by the 26th annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the largest event in America dedicated to that long-vanished but much-beloved art form. On Friday the NFPF will join the festival in presenting “Amazing Tales from the Archives,” wherein archivists from various countries present field reports on new and exciting preservation projects.
This year there are three presentations: Georges Mourier from the Cinémathèque Française will give news on the archive’s six-and-a-half-hour restoration of Abel Gance’s Napoleon. From Universal Pictures, Peter Schade and Emily Wensel will report on the studio’s new silent film preservation project, which has made possible the festival screening of The Last Warning, a murder mystery from 1929. Bryony Dixon, senior curator of silent film for the British Film … Read more