Thursday is the 1st night of the
SF Silent Film Festival, running June 1 - 4 at the
Castro Theatre. This year's festival presents
36 musicians providing live accompaniment for 18 films from 9 countries.
DJ Spooky is new to the festival this year, & on Friday night he accompanies
Body and Soul, a 1925 feature by African-American director
Oscar Micheaux, starring
Paul Robeson. On opening night the
Berklee Silent Film Orchestra performs their original score for
Harold Lloyd's The Freshman, & Sunday at noon the
Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra accompanies
Silence, a 1926 American crime drama based on a stage play, restored with recently discovered footage from the
Cinémathèque Française.
The festival has 2 films directed by women, including
The Dumb Girl of Portici, a high-budget epic directed by
Lois Weber & starring
Anna Pavlova in her only screen role.
Dorothy Arzner is the director of
Get Your Man, a comedy with
Clara Bow &
Buddy Rogers. It plays with a fragment of
Now We're in the Air, a lost comedy with
Louise Brooks &
Wallace Beery.
I am told that the Saturday afternoon showing of
Filibus, an Italian adventure film featuring sky pirates, is a must-see. Preceding the screening, the festival will present an award to the the Dutch
EYE Filmmuseum, for its commitment to the preservation of silent film. Films from the EYE's
Desmet Collection will be shown in the free, & always fascinating,
Amazing Tales from the Archives presentation on Friday morning.
The festival will also honor
David Shepard, a film preservationist who died this year, with a Saturday morning
program of shorts selected by the delightful
Serge Bromberg. The classic
Battleship Potemkin is on the schedule, as well as the the avant-garde
A Page of Madness, which I have always wanted to see.
Two Days, a Soviet film set during the Civil War in the Ukraine, looks intriguing.
I got to attend the festival's informal media preview event last month & had a chat with a fellow who does the sound for the Silent Film Festival, which sounds like an oxymoron, but isn't. He said
The Freshmen is one of his favorites & assured me that
The Three Musketeers show that closes the festival would be the most fun.
§
The 22nd San Francisco Silent Film Festival
June 1 - 4, 2017
Castro Theatre
§ Festival Site | Schedule & Tickets | Festival Pass
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