Alternative Film Guide

Also at the 50th San Francisco International Film Festival, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival organizers will screen three silent films:

A restored print of The Iron Mask (April 28), Allan Dwan’s 1929 Three Musketeers swashbuckler, notable as Douglas Fairbanks’s last silent film;

Victor Sjöström’s (aka Victor Seastrom) 1921 classic Körkarlen / The Phantom Carriage (April 27), with accompaniment by Jonathan Richman;

and Guy Maddin’s 2006 drama Brand Upon the Brain!, which will be accompanied by “a 13-piece ensemble, foley artists, a benshi-like narrator and a castrato.” All three silent-film screenings will be held at the Castro Theatre.

The Iron Mask screening will follow a q&a with silent film historian Kevin Brownlow, who will be the recipient of the Mel Novikoff Award. (”Named in honor of legendary San Francisco film exhibitor Mel Novikoff [1922-1987], this award is given to an individual or organization notable for making significant contributions to the Bay Area’s richly diverse film community.” See also Kevin Brownlow’s “essential silents.”]

Kevin Brownlow will also host a screening of several film clips. The paragraph below is from the San Francisco Festival’s page Kevin Brownlow: Introduction to Silents:

“When I first became interested in this period, I was told silent films were jerky, flickery, ludicrously acted curiosities. I was dismayed that even some of the old stars and directors believed the propaganda. It was dispelled by showing them the films. They were invariably astonished by the high quality. So I began a campaign to prevent the technicians of the past being regarded as idiots. The entire silent era lasted a little over 30 years, and advances in narrative techniques were extraordinarily fast. These are not necessarily classics, just the top-quality 35mm extracts which have come my way over the years — from the one-minute, one-shot films of the 1900s to the spectaculars of the late ’20s which exploited the entire language of cinema. En route we pay tribute to the fantasies of Maurice Tourneur, the genius of Keaton, the pictorialism of Rex Ingram and the stunning brilliance of so many regular but forgotten releases of the ’20s. Have we advanced as much since 1972?”

Featuring clips from:
Biograph actuality of Ealing Broadway (1900)
Broncho Billy’s Adventure (dir. Gilbert M. “Broncho Billy” Anderson, 1911)
Suspense (dir. Lois Weber, Phillips Smalley, 1913)
The Blue Bird (dir. Maurice Tourneur, 1918)
Home Made (Ford Educational, 1919)
One Week (dir. Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline, 1920)
Scaramouche (dir. Rex Ingram, 1924; with Ramon Novarro, Alice Terry and Lewis Stone)
Le Joueur d’échecs / The Chess Player (dir. Raymond Bernard, 1926)
The Mysterious Lady (dir. Fred Niblo, 1928; with Greta Garbo, Conrad Nagel and Gustav von Seyffertitz)
The Fire Brigade (dir. William Nigh, 1926; with Charles Ray, May McAvoy)

By the way, among this year’s San Francisco Film Festival other special award winners are George Lucas, Peter Morgan, Robin Williams, Heddy Honigmann, and Spike Lee.

San Francisco Film Festival 2007 - Article

Last Remaining Seats 2007

Tiburon Film Festival Awards - 2007 Winners

Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2007 in San Francisco

The 11th San Francisco Silent Film Festival

 

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