As the San Francisco Silent Film Festival awaits the much-anticipated reopening of a newly renovated Castro Theater, it temporarily pushed its traditional spring dates to late fall and relocated across the bridge to the beautiful Orinda Theater. A jewel of an independent theater that embraces its movie palace past with plush seats, Art Deco flourishes, and classic posters and memorabilia displayed throughout the building, it was a lovely choice for the largest silent film festival in the U.S. This year, the five-day event boasted 19 feature films, 11 shorts, and a fragment of an otherwise lost film, along the usual introductions, presentations on some of the restorations featured at the festival, and live music for every single screening.
SFSFF 2025 opened with a centenary screening of Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush. A massive hit in 1925 and one of Chaplin’s most beloved films, the epic comedy sends the Tramp into the Klondike equipped with little more than his bowler, cane, and baggy pants. It’s the little guy versus greed, hunger, and the fury of nature, his romantic idealism overcoming the cynicism and violence of the culture that (as we see later in the festival) destroyed so many.