By Kyle Westphal When the “Unseen Cinema” preservation project and touring package was conceived by Bruce Posner nearly two decades ago, it was situated as a curatorial corrective to histories of avant-garde film that began with Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon(1943) and ignored almost everything that came before. The fact that such long-standing periodization now seems perfectly arbitrary and somewhat hidebound is the greatest measure of the success of “Unseen Cinema.” The revisionist act of historiography has itself become historicized.  Culled from the collections of the world ..read more

By David Kiehn Miles Brothers still photograph of blasting at City Hall One of the most anticipated films of this year’s Festival is San Francisco, 1906, a newly-recovered film shot in the immediate aftermath of the great quake. The footage will be screening prior to Trappola on Saturday, June 2 at 2:45pm. In this guest post, historian David Kiehn of the NilesEssanay Silent Film Museum offers a deep dive into the production, distribution, and rediscovery of this invaluable record.  - Ed. When David Silver first saw the can of film in the trunk of a car a few blocks from the Al ..read more

by Kyle Westphal Long-time attendees of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival may feel that they’re on a first-name basis with our staff and board members, who are often front-and-center during the festival, introducing films and discussing the latest restorations. Among them is Rob Byrne, the SFSFF Board President, who also oversees several restorations for the Festival in a given year.  I recently talked to Rob about his career in preservation and several restorations that will premiering at this year’s Festival. This interview been slightly edited for length and clarity.  ..read more

by Kyle Westphal Museum of Modern Art / Films Stills Archive Ernst Lubitsch’s first American feature, Rosita, premiered ninety-five years ago, but hasn’t been much seen since. The San Francisco Silent Film Festival will be presenting the West Coast premiere of a new 4K DCP restoration from the Museum of Modern Art on Friday, June 1. I recently spoke to Dave Kehr, Curator of Film at MoMA, about the new restoration, his lifelong love of all things Lubitsch, and upcoming preservation projects. This interview has been lightly edited for space and clarity. KW: You studied and wrote abou ..read more

by Alicia Fletcher There are many great silent film programs beyond San Francisco. This week, we turn over the blog to a guest post from Toronto-based curator Alicia Fletcher, who offers a behind-the-scenes look at a recent series of silent fairy tale she programed, with special insight into the selection process and the practical work of tracking down prints. For more enchanted cinema, remember to check out Serge Bromberg Presents ... at the 2018 San Francisco Silent Film Festival - Ed. As a technical wonder, the moving image animates the inanimate, instills magic into the mundane, and tr ..read more

by Kyle Westphal How has film culture changed as fans move from the video store to streaming services, and what’s been lost? A piece in the New York Times earlier this month asked this increasingly familiar question, focusing on the fate of future filmmakers growing up today without access to the audio commentaries, making-of featurettes, and assorted extra that my generation took for granted. “[H]ours of geeky, director-narrated analysis at a low cost is gone” laments Fabrice Robinet, who coaxes similar sentiments from the makers of Stranger Things and The Kindergarten Teacher, this year ..read more

by Kyle Westphal As much a showman as a filmmaker, Cecil B. DeMille purportedly stumbled upon his first religious epic through a publicity stunt in the Los Angeles Times. Thousands of readers submitted story ideas for DeMille’s next picture and the winning entry came from a lubricant manufacturer in Lansing, Michigan, with a flair for vernacular verve: “You cannot break the Ten Commandments—they will break you.” Nearly one and a half million dollars later, DeMille debuted his 1923 rendition of The Ten Commandments, a film that contrasted the Exodus of the Old Testament with a modern story o ..read more

by Kyle Westphal   Longtime collectors of silent films on home video remember such labels as Video Yesteryear and Sinister Cinema. Even if you could barely make out the film after adjusting the tracking three times, it felt like a privilege just to see the film in any form. We’re currently living through a golden age of availability, with regular silent film DVD and Blu-ray releases from Kino Lorber, Milestone, Olive Films, and the Criterion Collection. (Region-free collectors can also count on first-rate releases from Masters of Cinema, the British Film Institute, and Edition Filmmus ..read more

by Kyle Westphal Does anybody remember The Artist? Seven long years ago, Michel Hazanavicius’s glistening throwback was tipped to usher in a new age of silent film appreciation. Septuagenarian silent cinema fanciers celebrated it as a movie that would get the kids interested in something other than MTV or frisbees or whatever passing fad had seduced the younger generation. Longtime accompanists performed The Artist with a live score, in hopes that new audiences would be sufficiently smitten to return the next week for a Raymond Griffith double bill. And veteran distributors of silent film on ..read more

This is the third part of Christine U'Ren's series on early movies. Read parts one and two.  But what was it like to be in one of those raucous phonograph parlors, back in the 1890’s? Well, if you’re anywhere near San Francisco, you can find out for yourself by visiting the city’s own Musée Mécanique on Fisherman’s Wharf. Founded by Edward Galland Zelinsky and now operated by his son Dan, the museum boasts “the world's largest (over 200) privately owned collection of coin-operated mechanical musical instruments and antique arcade machines in their original working condition ..read more