THE SAN FRANCISCO SILENT FILM FESTIVAL
833 MARKET STREET, SUITE 812
SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103-1828
TEL 415-777-4908 FAX 415-777-4904
www.silentfilm.org
PRESS CONTACT Stephen Salmons, Artistic Director
TEL 415-777-4908
EMAIL stephen@silentfilm.org
SAN FRANCISCO, December 23, 2008 -- The San Francisco Silent Film Festival will present a special all-day event on Valentine’s Day, Saturday February 14, at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, it was announced today by Artistic Director Stephen Salmons. “In addition to the three-day festival we produce every July, we’ve been putting on a Winter event for four years now,” explained Salmons. “Usually it takes place in early December, but this year we thought it would be fun to do something a little different, so we’ve put together a bouquet of silent films keyed specifically to Valentine’s Day.”
Salmons continued, “We’ve taken two films which look at love as the motivator for comic mayhem, added a drama of tremendous artistic vision that depicts love as a mythological force of nature, and topped it off with the quintessential date movie - a scream-filled horror comedy about people going nuts in a scary old house,” Salmons said. “It should be fun for the whole family.”
At noon the Valentine’s Day Event will begin with Buster Keaton’s ingenious take on Romeo and Juliet, OUR HOSPITALITY (1923). Keaton turns the age-old drama of two lovers caught in the middle of a feud between families into a laugh-out-loud parody of Southern hospitality, circa 1830. Upon learning he’s inherited the ancestral mansion, Buster takes the first train home to reclaim his heritage. Soon he’s courting a sweetheart - and dodging her family’s bullets. The climax of the film involves a daredevil rescue attempt above a roaring waterfall, a stunt which Keaton performed himself. “It’s one of the all-time great movie stunts,” Salmons said.
Next at 2:40pm is a madcap slapstick farce from Russia, A KISS FROM MARY PICKFORD (1927). The story involves a movie theater tickettaker who’s in love with an aspiring actress, but she only has eyes for movie idols like Douglas Fairbanks. Deciding he can win her over by becoming a famous screen star himself, the ticket-taker lands a stunt man job at a movie studio. When Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford arrive on a promotional tour, the ticket-taker gets all the fame he could ever want -- at his own peril! “Part of the fun is to watch how they cut actual newsreel footage of Fairbanks and Pickford in with the story,” Salmons said. “It’s trickery done with great glee.”
At 6:30pm the program will shift from comedy to drama with SUNRISE (1927), a timeless ode to the forces of love, desire, guilt and redemption, widely regarded as one of the supreme artistic achievements of the silent era. Director F. W. Murnau infuses his fable of a man, a temptress, and a wife with a lyrical, dreamlike intensity that makes for a heightened emotional experience of unforgettable power. “At the very first Academy Award ceremony, SUNRISE received the Oscar for Unique and Artistic Picture,” Salmons said. “It’s the only time that award has ever been given, and if you see the film, you’ll know why. There isn’t anything like it.”
At 9:30pm the Valentine’s Day Event will conclude with THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1927), directed with macabre abandon by Paul Leni (The Man Who Laughs). At the stroke of midnight, the heirs to a fortune gather in an old dark house for the reading of a will. One of them will inherit the estate and take possession of the famous West diamonds -- but only if they can survive the night without going insane. “This really is a protoype of the horror comedy film, still going strong today, and it’s guaranteed to make you laugh one minute and scream the next, “ Salmons said. “What could be better on Valentine’s Day than the original date movie?”
The San Francisco Silent Film Festival’s Valentine’s Day Event will take place on Saturday, February 14 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro Street in San Francisco. For complete program information and to buy advance tickets, go to www.silentfilm.org. The San Francisco Silent Film Festival is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting silent film as an art form and as a cultural and historical record.
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