San Francisco Silent Film Festival Articles

Eugen Illés‘ The Fall of Jerusalem The 16th San Francisco Silent Film Festival first morning program, "Amazing Tales from the Archives – The Archivist As Detective," presented the many problems identifying "Orphan Films" — unlabeled pieces of footage discovered in vaults or estates. The first example of such an orphan film was an excerpt from a movie determined to be Eugen Illés‘ 1922 German period [...]

George O’Brien, Margaret Livingston in F. W. Murnau’s Sunrise Election and Sideways director Alexander Payne, whose The Descendants is scheduled to open later this year, will be a guest presenter at the 2011 San Francisco Silent Film Festival (SFSFF). According to the SF Silent Film Festival’s press release, Payne "grew up watching silent films that he sent away for from the Blackhawk Films collection." Payne [...]

Marlene Dietrich in Kurt Bernhardt’s The Woman Men Yearn For Among the silent film classics to be featured at this year’s San Francisco Silent Film Festival are Victor Sjöström’s He Who Gets Slapped (1924), starring Lon Chaney, Norma Shearer, and John Gilbert in the newly founded MGM studios’ first production; five-time Oscar nominee Clarence Brown’s The Goose Woman (1925), starring Louise Dresser and Constance Bennett, [...]

Louise Brooks (center) in Diary of a Lost Girl (top); Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (upper middle); George O’Brien (center) in John Ford’s The Iron Horse (lower middle); Norma Talmadge in Sam Taylor and Henry King’s The Woman Disputed (bottom) The San Francisco Silent Film Festival kicks off on July 15 with a screening of John Ford’s The Iron Horse, at 7 p.m. at the Castro Theatre. [...]