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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Camille

She was a legendary Russian-born stage performer who studied with Stanislavsky, popularized the works of Ibsen and Chekov, and achieved acclaim as the first “modern” actress in the American theater. She became the highest-paid film actress of her era, and was also a true auteur with unprecedented … [Read more...] about Camille

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The Cameraman

You can read the program essay for our 2019 screening of The Cameraman here The Cameraman signaled the end of an era for Buster Keaton, the launch of a promising new one, and the dawn of a painful decline. It was another successful Keaton comedy, made in the informal yet efficient manner he’d … [Read more...] about The Cameraman

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The Cameraman

You can read the program essay for our 2012 screening of The Cameraman here You’d never know it, but The Cameraman was a bitch of a movie to make, being the first Buster Keaton made under his new contract at MGM, and the first with which he had to suffer the dumb know-nothing interference of a … [Read more...] about The Cameraman

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The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

If cinema came to be the troubled, fanciful, sensual, neurotic unconscious of human culture in the 20th century, feeding us lurid, wild images and scenarios in response to our twisted inner hungers and greatest fears as we simultaneously feed it history, phobias, narcissism, prejudices, and lust—if … [Read more...] about The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

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Bucking Broadway

John Ford’s name is inextricable from the myth of the American West. The caustic grand old man with an eye patch made classic westerns such as My Darling Clementine (1946) and The Searchers (1956), shooting in the iconic Monument Valley and helping create the larger-than-life personas of actors such … [Read more...] about Bucking Broadway

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La Bohème

In 1926, when Lillian Gish went in search of a new contract, a bidding war ensued between MGM and United Artists. She was not a major moneymaker but having trained on the sets of D.W. Griffith’s Biograph, she had a reputation as a great actress. A veteran of Griffith’s stock company since 1912, Gish … [Read more...] about La Bohème

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Body and Soul

Handsome, dynamic stage actor Paul Robeson appeared on the screen for the first time in Body and Soul, a 1925 silent film that showcased his versatility and charisma in a dual role. A stepping stone for Robeson from the theater to the movies, it is treated as a footnote in the career of this … [Read more...] about Body and Soul