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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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  • San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2026

BOOKKEEPER KREMKE

Music by Guenter Buchwald and Frank Bockius
Director
Marie M. Harder
Cast
Hermann Vallentin, Anna Sten, Ivan Koval-Samborski

“Problems of our time come alive shaking us to our core,” wrote the reviewer for Lichtbild-Bühne who was deeply impressed with the only fiction feature completed by director Marie Harder, head of the Social Democrat Party’s film service. Ukrainian-born Anna Sten makes her German cinema debut as a daughter coming into her own despite the fury of her tradition-bound father suddenly downsized from middle-class respectability.

  • 60 minutes
  • Germany
  • 1930
  • DCP
Introduction by
Julia Wallmüller
Underwritten by
Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts
Special support from
German Consulate General of San Francisco

Live musical accompaniment by Guenter Buchwald and Frank Bockius

Conductor, composer, pianist, and violinist GUENTER BUCHWALD is a pioneer of the renaissance in silent film music. He has accompanied silent films for thirty-eight years with a repertoire of more than three thousand titles and has conducted orchestras worldwide from Iceland to Romania, Tokyo to Zurich. In great demand as a composer, he has scored silent films as varied as Suzuki and Ota’s What Made Her Do It?, René Clair`s Paris qui dort, Chaplin´s Pawn Shop, and Murnau’s Nosferatu. A soloist known for his virtuoso improvisation, he has appeared regularly at film festivals in Berlin, Bonn, Bologna, Zurich, Pordenone, and Seattle. He is a lecturer at the Film Science Institute at the University of Zurich and resident conductor of the Freiburg Philharmonic Orchestra for Silent Film in Concert. He is cofounder of the Silent Movie Music Company and is musical director of Bristol’s Slapstick Silent Film Festival in England.

Versatile percussionist FRANK BOCKIUS specializes in jazz and is versed in medieval, flamenco, and Latin music styles. He has performed for dance and theater companies as well as in his own bands, including the jazz quintet Whisper Hot and the percussion ensemble Timpanicks. He joined Guenter Buchwald’s Silent Movie Music Company twenty years ago and has since performed for silent films at festivals in Kyoto, Pordenone, and Sodankylä, Finland.

Details

Original Language Title
LOHNBUCHHALTER KREMKE
Country
Germany
Director
Marie M. Harder
Year
1930
Cast
Hermann Vallentin, Anna Sten, Ivan Koval-Samborski
Source
Deutsche Kinemathek
Runtime
60 minutes
Format
DCP
Sun, May 10, 2026
1:00 PM
Castro Theatre
$20 general
$18 member
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