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BABYLON

December 28, 2022 By Leave a Comment

BABYLON

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 »

Tagged With: Clara Bow, Elinor Glyn, high art, Hollywood, Irving Thalberg, John Gilbert, low art, orgy, silent film, talkies

2022 Silent Film Festival — Artistic Director Anita Monga Interview

May 3, 2022 By Leave a Comment

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 »

Tagged With: Blind Husbands, Booth Tarkington, Buster Keaton, Castro Theatre, DJ Spooky, Dziga Vertov, Erich Von Stroheim, Ernst Lubitsch, Foolish Wives, German expressionism, Julien Duvivier, Lady Windermere’s Fan, Library of Congress, Lobster Films, Max Linder, Natacha Rambova, Nazimova, Oscar Wilde, RE-Birth of a Nation, Russian Civil War, Serge Bromberg, silent film, Timothy Brock, Ukraine, World Food Kitchen

YAKUZA PRINCESS — Vicente Amorim Interview

May 3, 2022 By Leave a Comment

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 »

Tagged With: Bleach bypass, Brazil, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, cinematography, Danilo Beyruth, graphic novel, Gustavo Hadba, katana, moral relativism, silent film, Yakuza

2017 San Francisco Silent Film Festival — Anita Monga Interview

May 30, 2017 By 1 Comment

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 »

Tagged With: Ana Pavlova, Anita Monga, BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, Cecil B. DeMille, cinema history, Cinémathèque Française, Clara Bow, D.W. Griffith, DJ Spooky, Douglas Fairbanks, Ernst Lubitsch, film preservation, film restoration, Georges Meliès, Harold Lloyd, Library of Congress, Lois Weber, Max Fleischer, Oscar Micheaux, Paul Robeson, Rob Byrne, Serge Bromberg, Sergei Eisenstein, silent film, THE FRESHMAN, THE THREE MUSKETEERS, Universal Pictures

Anita Monga on the 2016 San Francisco Silent Film Festival

June 1, 2016 By 1 Comment

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 »

Tagged With: Abel Gance, Albatross Studios, Anthony Asquith, BFI, Bryony Dixon, Castro Theatre, cinema history, Cinemateque Francais, Douglas Fairbanks Sr, Emil Jannings, Ernst Lubitsch, film history, film restoration, Guenter Buchwald, Hal Roach, Hayes Code, John Mirsalis, Laurel and Hardy, Louise Brooks, Nanook of the North, Oakland Symphony chorus, Oscar Micheaux, Ozu, pie fight, Pola Negri, Rene Clair, Rob Byrne, San Francisco, silent cinema, silent film, Silent Film Festival, The Battle of the Century, Universal Pictures, Within Our Gates

Mark Burton and Richard Starzak — Puns, Cryptomnesia, and Dreams with SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE

August 6, 2015 By 1 Comment

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 »

Tagged With: A Close Shave, Aardman Animation, animation, animators, cinema, Cryptomnesia, film, Mark Burton, movie, Nick Park, Peter Lord, plasticine, puns, puppet runner, Richard Starzak, Shaun the Sheep, sheep, silent film, stop-frame animation, stop-motion, Tom and Jerry cartoons, Vladimir Putin, Wallace and Gromit

20 Years of Glorious Silence — Anita Monga on the 2015 San Francisco Silent Film Festival

May 28, 2015 By 1 Comment

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 »

Tagged With: African-American cinema, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, Anita Monga, avante-garde, BEN-HUR, Bert Williams, BFI, Blanche Sweet, Boris Karloff, British Film Institute, Bruce Goldstein, Carl Davis, Castro Theatre, CAVE OF THE SPIDER WOMAN, Charley Bowers, Cinematique Francaise, Clarence Brown, Colleen Moore, Dimitri Kirsanoff, EarPlay, EMAK-BAKIA, Film Forum, Frank Capra, Greta Garbo, Hearst Castle, John Gilbert, Julia Morgan, Knut Hamsun, Lars Hansen, LIME KILN CLUB FIELD DAY, Louis B Mayer. Matti Bye Ensemble, Lusitania, Man Ray, MÉNILMONTANT, MoMA, Museum of Modern Art, NORRTULLSLIGAN, Palace of Fine Arts, Panama Pacific International Exhibition, Paul McGann, Pauline Kael, PPIE, Rob Byrne, San Francisco earthquake, Serge Bromberg, SF Silent Film Festival, silent film, Stephen Horne, Surrealists, Technicolor, THE ARTIST, THE DEADLIER SEX, THE DONOVAN AFFAIR, THE GHOST TRAIN, VISAGE D’ENFANTS, WHEN THE EARTH TREMBLED, William Gillette, William Randolph Hearst

Serge Bromberg of Lobster Films talks paternal influences, cocktail-swilling elephants, and when a lobster is not a lobster.

May 26, 2015 By 1 Comment

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 »

Tagged With: 1920s Paris, Buster Keaton, Charley Bowers, cinema, cinema history, film archivist, film historian, film preservation, film restoration, French Surrealists, Lobster Films, San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Serge Bromberg, silent film

BRAND UPON THE BRAIN!

October 21, 2014 By Leave a Comment

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 »

Tagged With: black and white cinematography, Guy Maddin, lighthouse, memoir, memory, mother-son relationship, silent film, tortured sexuality

Michel Hazanavicius is THE ARTIST

September 1, 2014 By Leave a Comment

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 »

Tagged With: Berenice Bejo, cinema, French Cinema, James Cromwell, Jean DuJardin, John Goodman, Michel Hazanavicius, Missy Pyle, movie, narrative, Oscar-winner, Penelope Ann Miller, silent film, Uggo

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