In BABYLON, Damien Chazelle has given us several films about the last hurrah of silent films and the birth of synchronized sound. Some of them are good, some of them are muddled, and one of them is superb. Chazelle’s ambitious attempt to encapsulate a time and place provokes respect for the effort, even when it… Read More »
2022 Silent Film Festival — Artistic Director Anita Monga Interview
After what I call a two-year pandemic pause, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival returns for its 25th year of showcasing the rich legacy of film history from the time before movies spoke. When I talked via Zoom with the festival’s Artistic Director, Anita Monga, on April 30 2022, we discussed the amazing range of the… Read More »
YAKUZA PRINCESS — Vicente Amorim Interview
Click here to listen to the interview. When I spoke to Vicente Amorim by Zoom on August 29, 2021, it was to talk abut his latest film, YAKUZA PRINCESS, a high-energy, fiendishly plotted martial arts fest starring MASUMI in her feature film acting debut. She plays a young woman living in Sao Paulo who discovers… Read More »
2017 San Francisco Silent Film Festival — Anita Monga Interview
I always look forward to my annual interview with Anita Monga, Artistic Director of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. A genteel woman with a sly sense of humor and a wealth of knowledge about cinema history, she never fails to delight in both her conversation and the dynamic cross-section of films that she programs… Read More »
Anita Monga on the 2016 San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Few people speak about silent cinema with such authority and such affection as Anita Monga, Artistic Director of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. When we spoke on May 16, 2016, it was to discuss not just the dynamic slate of films at this year’s festival, its 21st, but also the work that the festival… Read More »
Mark Burton and Richard Starzak — Puns, Cryptomnesia, and Dreams with SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE
Aardman Animation. For hordes of animation fans, you don’t need to say anything else about a film in order to get them to pack a theater. I, however, will add that the latest from that storied studio, the SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE, is everything that not just a great Aardman film should be, but also… Read More »
20 Years of Glorious Silence — Anita Monga on the 2015 San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Anita Monga, Artistic Director of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, is a treasure trove of all things to do with silent cinema. Every time I talk with her, I learn something new, and every year at the festival that she oversees so lovingly, I see a selection of films that are the perfect distillation… Read More »
Serge Bromberg of Lobster Films talks paternal influences, cocktail-swilling elephants, and when a lobster is not a lobster.
Serge Bromberg, courtesy of the company he founded, Lobster Films, has been discovering and restoring films from the silent era through the 1960s for 25 years. The excuse for myinterview (I’ve wanted to talk to him for years) was his imminent appearance at the 20th anniversary of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, which had… Read More »
BRAND UPON THE BRAIN!
Guy Maddin’s BRAND UPON THE BRAIN! is such a purely, viscerally visual experience that, like trying to describe a dream, much is lost when trying to put the language of the subconscious into words. And that is what Maddin is working with here. Boasting no spoken dialogue, eccentric black-and-white exposures, he bills this as a… Read More »
Michel Hazanavicius is THE ARTIST
Michel Hazanavicius enjoys evoking bygone cinematic eras, as in his spy spoof set in the 1950s, OSS 117 – NEST OF SPIES. When he decided the time was right to make THE ARTIST, a silent film, the first person he had to convince about the viability of his idea was himself. When I spoke to him on… Read More »