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.

Become a Member

By

L’Inferno

With its horned demons, headless specters, and winged harpies, 1911’s L’Inferno revels in the grotesque, the feudal, and the macabre. Like a fairy tale gone wrong, or a Hieronymus Bosch painting set in motion, the canonical work of Italy’s early silent era infused biblical subject matter with … [Read more...] about L’Inferno

By

Lights of Old Broadway

By 1924, Metro Pictures was ailing. Founded in 1915 it had major successes with child star Jackie Coogan, “Great Stone Face” Buster Keaton, and sensational Rudolph Valentino in Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921). But Metro lost Valentino to Paramount and was also in need of more theaters to … [Read more...] about Lights of Old Broadway

By

The Lighthouse Keepers

Obscure outside of France, the great director Jean Grémillon is a tantalizing figure even for those Americans who discover him, since most of his films remain difficult to see. Those lucky or determined enough to track them down find works of singular grace and sensitivity, with a vision that is … [Read more...] about The Lighthouse Keepers

By

l’Homme du Large

L’Homme du Large sits near the dawn of Marcel L’Herbier’s career. The director was thirty-one and had completed three films prior, but never with the resources being offered him now. Here was his best chance yet to make a film in the Impressionist mode—testing, redefining the limits of the cinematic … [Read more...] about l’Homme du Large

By

L’Heureuse mort

A frothy farce of false identity, L’heureuse mort reveals little of the upheavals—wars, revolution, exodus—that lie behind its existence. It was produced by Russian filmmakers who fled the rising tide of revolution and landed in Paris. It was directed by Serge Nadjedine, a shadowy figure with little … [Read more...] about L’Heureuse mort

By

Les Deux Timides

You can read the program essay for our 2016 screening of Les Deux Timides here A talented batch of new directors redefined the French film scene in the 1920s. Artists like Jean Gremillon, Jean Renoir and Luis Bunuel combined avant-garde and commercial film techniques during the post-war years. In … [Read more...] about Les Deux Timides

By

Les Deux Timides

You can read the program essay for our 2008 screening of Les Deux Timides here René Clair’s final film of the silent era was not the film he’d planned to make. When Films Albatros renewed Clair’s contract in 1927 after the success of The Italian Straw Hat, the director began work on a realist … [Read more...] about Les Deux Timides