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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

May 20, 2022 By anita

Limite

Limite was the only film completed by writer and director Mário Peixoto. Perhaps it could only have been made by someone who had never attempted a movie before: someone like the twenty-two-year-old Peixoto who wanted to create something entirely new, to push beyond the limit—the final, utmost, or … [Read more...] about Limite

Filed Under: Essay

May 20, 2022 By anita

The Fire Brigade

When I was working on the Hollywood TV series in the 1970s, I had a challenge from the outset; how to persuade an audience which had contempt for silent films not to switch off. I took a risk: first I showed a rescue from a burning building, made at the beginning of cinema and symbolic of what … [Read more...] about The Fire Brigade

Filed Under: Essay

May 20, 2022 By anita

Skinner’s Dress Suit

Skinner’s Dress Suit was a well-known commodity by the time Universal Pictures reimagined it for comedian Reginald Denny. The character of Skinner was the brainchild of American author Henry Irving Dodge, whose “Skinner’s Dress Suit” was serialized in The Saturday Evening Post before it was … [Read more...] about Skinner’s Dress Suit

Filed Under: Essay

May 20, 2022 By anita

A Trip to Mars

Space travel was truly a visionary concept when Jules Verne first introduced it in his 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon and it continued to attract readers when H.G. Wells explored the idea further a few years later in 1901’s First Men in the Moon. Although both authors were fascinated with … [Read more...] about A Trip to Mars

Filed Under: Essay

May 20, 2022 By anita

Sylvester

German cinema between the wars—in the wake of the Versailles Treaty and the crippling debt that came with it, the impending spike in inflation, and the trauma of military defeat—was often populated with fallen men, particularly vulnerable to the forces of modernity and inadequately equipped to … [Read more...] about Sylvester

Filed Under: Essay

May 20, 2022 By anita

Arrest Warrant

It's yet another under-explored, under-restored arm of silent film history—Soviet Ukrainian cinema, at least the years before Oleksandr Dovzhenko began making his distinctly regional films in the late 1920s. Soviet film was, even into the 1980s, always unwittingly conflicted about its provincial … [Read more...] about Arrest Warrant

Filed Under: Essay

May 20, 2022 By anita

Prem Sanyas

In March 1926, while India was still under colonial rule, an Indian silent feature achieved a rare feat: it screened for nine months at London’s Philharmonic Hall, with the run extended for three more days at the last minute because of overwhelming demand. The film was Prem Sanyas, or The Light of … [Read more...] about Prem Sanyas

Filed Under: Essay

May 20, 2022 By anita

Penrod and Sam

Penrod and Sam is a series of vignettes about a typical white American boy, his best pal, and the neighborhood kids who join him in playing Army games and exercising their vivid imaginations. There’s a mean next-door neighbor with an equally nasty father, a cute girl who lives across the street, and … [Read more...] about Penrod and Sam

Filed Under: Essay

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