Posted in: by Sean Axmaker, Film Festivals, Silent Cinema

San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2023: One Last Silent Movie Party at the Castro Theatre?

The 26th San Francisco Silent Film Festival was another joyous gathering of silent cinema fans, historians, scholars, and all stripes of movie buffs. Launched in 1995, the festival has grown from a single-day event to—excluding two years of Covid shutdowns—an annual, five-day celebration. It’s about the movies, of course, and this year SFSFF presented 20 features and seven shorts. But it’s also about the silent movie experience. All shows were accompanied by live music, from solo piano to small combos to a 10-piece mini-orchestra for the closing-night event, playing both archival music and original scores, many composed for the screenings.

Allan Dwan’s The Iron Mask, from 1929, opened the festival with a bittersweet farewell to the silents. The film, the swashbuckling final silent feature to star Douglas Fairbanks, has added resonance for SFSFF audiences because of the legacy of the Castro Theatre, the festival’s home for its entire 26 years. The new owners of the movie palace in the heart of the Castro district have controversially chosen to remove the seats and level the floor to turn it into a concert venue, which would effectively end its suitability as a screening space.

In many ways, The Iron Mask’s selection was a fitting farewell, as Fairbanks’s older kind of hero is shaped by loss and disappointment but still driven by duty and honor and, of course, friendship, to fight the good fight one last time. The final images are at once joyous and melancholic, a celebration of what has been accomplished as the end comes.

Continue reading at Slant Magazine

You can also read the essays written for the festival program book at the SFSFF website here.

Posted in: by Sean Axmaker, Contributors, Film Festivals, Silent Cinema

A Rich and Varied World: Highlights of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival

The great misconception of silent cinema is that it’s all about movies that lack the dimension of sound. It’s the idea of “lack” they get wrong. Apart from the oft-stated fact that silent cinema was never silent—from the biggest movie palaces to the smallest storefront theaters, the movies were always accompanied with music and often with sound effects—movies developed as a uniquely visual form of storytelling just as radio drama and comedy evolved into a sophisticated form of audio storytelling. Whether you believe it a purer from of cinema or an archaic one, silent movies offer a different kind of experience than sound cinema, one built on faces and physical performance to communicate character and emotion. Forget the cliché of outsized acting styles and simplistic situations plucked from slapstick farces and spoofs. There is a rich world and varied world in the silents, from surreal comedy to magnificent spectacle to adult drama, with performances both bold and nuanced.

That is the experience celebrated at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the biggest and greatest celebration of cinema before the talkies in the U.S. The 24th year of this annual event presented 23 features between May 1 through May 5 at the Castro Theater (“the Cathedral to Cinema,” as it was so described by the director of the National Film Archive of Japan, Hisashi Okajima), along with shorts and special presentations. 

Continue reading at RogerEbert.com

Posted in: by Sean Axmaker, Contributors, Film Festivals, Silent Cinema

Your 2018 San Francisco Silent Film Festival Preview

“True art transcends time” is the motto of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, which opens its twenty-third edition at the historic Castro Theatre on Wednesday, May 30. What began as a one-day event over two decades ago has grown into the largest and most impressive silent film festival in the country. The twenty-three programs presented over the five-day event include twenty features (from forty-five minutes to three and a half hours in length) from nine countries, ranging from the avant-garde, to the experimental, and even 3D shorts. And all are matched with live music from some of the best silent movie accompanists from around the world.

Continue reading at Fandor

Posted in: by Sean Axmaker, Contributors, Film Festivals, Film Reviews, SIFF

SIFF Diary – Week 1

There was a time when I threw myself into SIFF, seeing 50, 60, sometimes over 70 films between the first days of press screenings and the closing night gala (that’s still far short of some passholders who watch over 100 films over the course of the fest). Those days are over for many reasons, not the least of which is that San Francisco Silent Film Festival, which now plays out smack dab in the middle of SIFF and pulls me out of town for nearly a week. This year I expect to see something between 10 and 15 films scheduled between my day job and writing deadlines, and while that means I miss a lot of interesting films, the upside is that I treasure those films I do get to see and I have more time to ruminate over them. Here are thoughts on some of the films I saw the first. No press screenings for me this year. These were all seen with festival audiences.

Audiences split on First Reformed (US) but critics are raving and I think it’s Paul Schrader’s finest and richest film since Affliction. It also defies expectations of an American psychological drama by following a style more similar to his most beloved filmmakers: Carl Dreyer, Robert Bresson, Andrei Tarkovsky among them. Read More “SIFF Diary – Week 1”

Posted in: Film Festivals, Seattle Screens, SIFF

SIFFing: Parallax View’s SIFF 2018 Guide

[Updated June 7, 2018]

The 44th Annual Seattle International Film Festival opens on Thursday, May 17, with the opening night gala presentation of Goya-winning feature The Bookshop with Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, and Bill Nighy from Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet, and closes 24 days later on Sunday, June 10 with Portland-based filmmaker Gus Van Sant’s Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot. In between there are (at last count) 168 feature films, 66 documentary features, 10 archival films, and 164 short films among the multimedia presentations. All told: 433 films representing 90 countries (as of opening night).

Here is Parallax View’s coverage and guide to SIFF resources from around the web. We will update a few times a week.

SIFF Week by Week, Day by Day:

SIFF 2018: The best of the fest’s final weekend (staff, Seattle Times) NEW
SIFF 2018 Picks: Final Week (Keiko DeLuca, Seth Sommerfeld, and Gavin Borchert, Seattle Weekly) NEW
The 29 Best Movies To See at SIFF This Week: June 4-10 (Staff, The Stranger) NEW
SIFF 2018: week three highlights (Michael Bracy, Three Imaginary Girls) NEW
SIFF 2018: Picks for Week Three (staff, The Sunbreak) NEW
Read More “SIFFing: Parallax View’s SIFF 2018 Guide”

Posted in: Contributors, Editor, Film Festivals

SIFF 2017: It’s a wrap!

The Golden Space Needle Audience Awards were handed out for SIFF 2017 on Sunday, June 11, and soon after the Best of SIFF 2017 line-up was announced.

Parallax View has both covered for you here.

(You can also peruse reviews, interviews, and other features collected and curated in Parallax View’s SIFF 20187 Guide here.)

Rodrigo Grande’s Argentine crime thriller At the End of the Tunnel won the Golden Space Needle Audience Awards for Best Film and Best Director and Peter Bratt’s Dolores, a portrait of racial and labor activist Dolores Huerta, won for Best Documentary. Seattle audiences also awarded Sami Blood star Lene Cecilia Sparrok the Best Actress award and David Johns of I, Daniel Blake the Best Actor award.

Read More “SIFF 2017: It’s a wrap!”

Posted in: Contributors, Editor, Film Festivals, SIFF

SIFFing: Parallax View’s SIFF 2017 Guide

The 43rd Annual Seattle International Film Festival opens on Thursday, May 18, with the opening night gala presentation of The Big Sick, from director Michael Showalter and writer/star Kumail Nanjiani, and closes 24 days later on Sunday, June 11 with the North American premiere of Raoul Peck’s The Young Karl Marx. In between there are (at last count) 161 feature films, 58 documentary features, 14 archival films, and 163 short films. All told: 400 films representing 80 countries (as of opening night).

Here is Parallax View’s coverage and guide to SIFF resources from around the web. We will update a few times a week.

SIFF Week by Week, Day by Day:

SIFF 2017: It’s a wrap! (Parallax View) NEW
The 13 Best Movies to See at SIFF This Weekend: June 9-11, 2017 (staff, The Stranger) NEW
Highlights of the film festival’s final weekend (staff, Seattle Times) NEW
Closing Weekend Picks (staff, The SunBreak) NEW
Homestretch Roundtable (The SunBreak) NEW
SIFF 2017: Week Four Preview (Sean Gilman, Seattle Screen Scene) NEW
Read More “SIFFing: Parallax View’s SIFF 2017 Guide”

Posted in: by Robert Horton, Contributors, Film Festivals, SIFF

Sifting Through SIFF

At some point the numbers are overwhelming. This is the 43rd annual Seattle International Film Festival, a marathon that lasts 25 days across 15 venues (Bellevue, Kirkland, and Shoreline included), with around 400 feature-length and short films from 80 countries. There are gobs of panels and festivities and visiting filmmakers.

It seems churlish to be a movie lover and complain that SIFF is too big, especially when the city seems to love it so much. It is, undeniably, a vast and glittery party, and every year it brings necessary gems and some lovely out-of-left-field experiences. Still, I can’t help thinking there’s a splendid 10-day festival to be carved out of this unfocused sprawl.

Continue reading at Seattle Weekly

Posted in: by Sean Axmaker, Contributors, Film Festivals

SIFF 2017: From ‘The Big Sick’ to ‘The Young Karl Marx’ – over 400 movies in 24 days

The 43rd Annual Seattle International Film Festival opens on Thursday, May 18, with the opening night gala presentation of Sundance and SXSW hit The Big Sick from director Michael Showalter and writer/star Kumail Nanjiani.

24 days later, the North American premiere of Raoul Peck’s The Young Karl Marx takes the closing night spot at Cinerama on Sunday, June 11.

In between, 233 features films (including 58 documentaries) and 163 short films from 80 countries will screen across 12 venues in Seattle, Bellevue, Kirkland, and Shoreline.

Welcome to SIFF 2017, still the biggest and longest film festival in the United States. It’s got something for everyone, from world premieres to restorations of classic movies, from movies for families to gonzo midnight movies that are definitely not for kids. There are comedies and dramas and thrillers, true stories and fantasies and stranger-than-fiction documentaries.

Read More “SIFF 2017: From ‘The Big Sick’ to ‘The Young Karl Marx’ – over 400 movies in 24 days”

Posted in: by Robert Horton, Contributors, Film Festivals

Preview: Seventh Art Stand

Alongside the woven objects and 16th-century painted tiles in the Seattle Art Museum’s Islamic Collection hang a series of entirely modern artifacts. Iraqi artist Qasim Sabti’s “Book Cover Collage” pieces are rendered from the remains of books retrieved from Baghdad libraries in the wake of the 2003 bombings. They stand as proof of the ability of art to travel: These pieces have come all the way from a Baghdad street to a well-manicured Seattle art museum to testify. Before that, the books themselves came from all over the world to bring beauty, history, or subversive ideas to Iraq. The isolated word “Gulliver” peeks out from one collage, indicating the presence of literature’s most famous traveler.

Movies are also great travelers, and the global reach of cinematic art gets a boost in May through a national project organized partly by the Northwest Film Forum and the New York distributor Abramorama. The Seventh Art Stand is an initiative, hosted by dozens of U.S. independent theaters and film societies, to make “an act of cinematic solidarity against Islamophobia.”

Continue reading at Seattle Weekly