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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Soft Shoes

There’s an easygoing, friendly manner to actor Harry Carey. His smile, the wrinkle around his eyes, to say nothing of that aura of quiet inner strength, reminds one of John Wayne at his best—only Harry Carey was projecting those qualities from the screen when Wayne was still in high school. Carey … [Read more...] about Soft Shoes

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So This is Paris

By the early 1920s, German director Ernst Lubitsch had established a reputation as a master of two genres—grand historical epics and sparkling comedies. American audiences happily paid to see his films as well, and superstar Mary Pickford, eager to leave behind little girl roles for sophisticated … [Read more...] about So This is Paris

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Snow White

Hindsight is a two-edged sword. On one hand, it can give us a useful perspective on historical events; on the other, it can saddle us with preconceptions that make those events difficult to understand or appreciate. To the first-time viewer, the 1916 Famous Players version of Snow White can be a … [Read more...] about Snow White

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The Smiling Madame Beudet

The time has come, I believe, to listen in silence to our own song, to try to express our own personal vision, to define our own sensibility, to make our own way. Let us learn to look, let us learn to see, let us learn to feel. —Germaine Dulac, Let Us Have Faith (1919) Germaine Dulac didn’t … [Read more...] about The Smiling Madame Beudet

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Sir Arne’s Treasure

Snow is inherently cinematic. It forms a white screen, like a Chinese scroll, on which dark forms have the spare eloquence of calligraphy. And while it may suggest peace, it also evokes the burn and sting of cold, giving bite to scenes of extremity and struggle: Lillian Gish, a frail wisp battered … [Read more...] about Sir Arne’s Treasure

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The Silent Enemy

Like most so-called ethnographic films, The Silent Enemy owed as much to museum exhibits as to Hollywood studios. Early ethnographic films were shown as companions to natural history lectures concerned with exotic corners of the world, but quickly grew into self-contained film exhibits shot on … [Read more...] about The Silent Enemy

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Silent Avant-Garde

Selections from the touring retrospective Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1894–1941, a collaborative film preservation and restoration project by Anthology Film Archives, New York; and Deutsches Filmmuseum, Frankfurt am Main; in collaboration with sixty of the world’s leading film … [Read more...] about Silent Avant-Garde