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San Francisco Silent Film Festival

San Francisco Silent Film Festival

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival is a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating the public about silent film as an art form and as a culturally valuable historical record.

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  • Essay
  • Festival 2015

Amazing Tales from the Archives 2015

Essay by SFSFF editor

Presenters: Serge Bromberg, Robert Byrne, Bryony Dixon, Jennifer Miko

DETECTING SHERLOCK
Preservationist and president of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival board of directors, Robert Byrne has been collaborating with the Cinémathèque Française on restoring William Gillette’s Sherlock Holmes since its fortuitous discovery in the French archive. Byrne will describe the process of returning the landmark fi lm to a state as close as possible to the original.

TOURNEUR WAXES EXPRESSIONISTIC
Before coming to America and directing his signature lavish fantasies, Maurice Tourneur directed detective pictures and adaptions of horror stories in his native France. Serge Bromberg of Lobster Films will describe fi nding and restoring Tourneur’s Figures de cire, based on a two-act drama by Grand Guignol playwright André de Lorde and featuring creepy pre-Caligari shadows.

UNSINKABLE HISTORY
Marking the centenary of the sinking of the passenger liner RMS Lusitania by a German U-boat, curator of silent fi lm for the British Film Institute’s National Archive Bryony Dixon will show footage from BFI’s vaults related to the tragedy and look beyond the propaganda to share stories of how the beautiful “Lucy” intersected with the world of silent fi lm. Actor and authority on WWI, Paul McGann—a Liverpool native, as were many of the ship’s lost crew—will narrate from contemporary accounts.

TECHNICOLOR TURNS 100
In recognition of the centennial of the Technicolor Corporation, Movette Film Transfer president Jennifer Miko will present 35mm fi lm footage taken at La Cuesta Encantada, more commonly known as Hearst Castle. Shot in Technicolor Process II, the fi lm is a tour of the grounds of the sprawling estate led by the architect Julia Morgan, accompanied by “The Chief” himself, W.R. Hearst.

Presented at SFSFF 2015 with live music by Donald Sosin

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