The 2025 Iteration of SF’s Famed Silent Film Festival Unspools in an Art Deco Gem in Orinda

by Meredith Brody  (November 10, 2025)

I bow to no one in my appreciation, nay, adulation, of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival (aka SFSFF).  It’s not only one of the jewels in the crown of local film festivals, but now has achieved international acclaim, drawing attendees not only from the US but the world.

And yet I still read the schedule impatiently, preferring the new-to-me titles than the familiar ones. I also bow to no one in my appreciation, nay, adulation, of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, but my novelty-seeking soul rejects yet another screening of The Gold Rush (opening night, Wednesday, November 12) and Go West (closing night, Sunday, November 16) on their 100th anniversaries.

Until I remember that every screening at SFSFF is worth going to, because of its unique musical accompaniment. The first year I attended, more than twenty years ago, I picked and chose among its offerings, and immediately realized I was a MAROON, because of the elation I felt while hearing as well as seeing the shows, creating an entirely fresh experience. I’ve never missed a single screening of SFSFF’s since, with gratifying – even ecstatic – results.

Plus I realize it’s among the SFSFF’s briefs to create a new audience for silent films – and who better to seduce the innocents than Charlie Chaplin, in The Gold Rush, one of his acknowledged masterpieces, and accompanied by maestro Timothy Brock, anointed by Vogue magazine as “THE film music guru…”, with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra.

Or the even more seductive (for me!) Buster Keaton, paired with the soulful brown eyes of a cow named Brown Eyes, in Go West, accompanied by the delightful, witty sounds of the beloved Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, and live special effects by Nicholas White.

I also appreciate the wit of starting with Chaplin and ending, four days later, with Keaton – whose beautiful face adorned cardboard fans that the SFSFF handed out to its audience years ago, resulting in a famed photograph of a theater full of Keatons.

This year the SFSFF has taken up residence in the famed Art Deco gem the Orinda Theatre, conveniently located just a few minutes’ walk from the Orinda BART station, set in an eminently walkable village that offers interesting shops and a number of eateries to enjoy and explore. Plus plenty of parking.

One of the things I most admire about the SFSFF is the wit of its programming: a day is exquisitely planned to pull you along from genre to genre, interspersing long films with short, comedies with melodrama, American Westerns with sophisticated foreign fare. (And balancing types of musical accompaniments, from a single piano to a full orchestra.)

Early risers on Thursday, November 13, should attend a free show at 10:30 a.m..  “Amazing Tales From The Archives”, is an annual favorite where film archive detectives reveal the trials and tribulations of seeking lost movies including the discovery of Sherlock Holmes films and newly recovered footage in The Gold Rush.

The rest of this first full day strikes me as a Boys’ Own Adventure Day, featuring Sherlock Holmes at 2 p.m., a movie about a detective/fighter pilot, the all-Black-cast The Flying Ace at 4 p.m., a shipwreck tale, The Wreck of the Hesperus at 5:45 p.m., and Beau Geste, at 7:30 p.m., in which three English brothers fight in the French Foreign Legion. Ronald Colman and William Powell co-star.

Friday November 14 offers three back-to back screenings of screen beautiful divas: Anna Sten before her American career in the Russian My Son at 4:30 pm; Gloria Swanson in the extravagant The Affairs of Anatol  at 6:30 p.m., her final work with Cecil B. DeMille until they appeared together in Sunset Boulevard thirty years later; and 24-year-old Norma Shearer in Benjamin Christensen’s US debut, The Devil’s Circus, rounds out the night at 9 p.m.

Saturday, November 15, is a perfect example of the SFSFF’s clever rollercoaster programming: beginning at 10 a.m. with a short program of newly-restored Max and Dave Fleischer’s animated Koko shorts — fun for the whole family! – and sinuously winding through Festival favorite Anna May Wong’s first film made abroad, Song, at 12 p.m, a Carl Dreyer melodrama, Master of the House, Clarence Brown’s action-packed Alaska-set Western The Trail of ’98 at 5 p.m., the comic German Saxophone Susy featuring the dancing Anny Ondra (of Hitchcock’s dubbed Blackmail fame) at 7 p.m., ending with Tod Browning’s disturbing The Unknown at 9 p.m. with Lon Chaney as Alonzo the Armless (or is he?), sacrificing limbs for a pitiless Joan Crawford.

Closing Day, Sunday November 16, begins later (11 a.m.) and ends earlier (Go West starts at 7:15 p.m.), but with equally clever arrangements of genre, tone, country or origin, and length: an hour-long Tom Mix western, Trailin’  to begin, followed by an hour-long Lubitsch comedy starring Emil Jannings and Henny Porten at 12:45 p.m., Kohlhiesel’s Daughters, based on The Taming of the Shrew (and just when I was longing for Shakespeare!), but trading a snowy Bavarian village for Verona; Mauritz Stiller’s Song of the Scarlet Flower at 2:30 p.m. starring Lars Hanson as what they call a “lusty lumberman;” and then, at 5 p.m., the famed Asphalt by German Joe May, a sexy roundelay between a lady jewel thief and a cop. And all the weekend’s festivities end, alas, with Go West(at 7:15 p.m.), the Sunday cherry on top of the sundae that is the SFSFF.

All attendees will receive a collectible Program Book with articles and rare photos.

Enjoy the Festival trailer by Siobhan Dunne.

Read Janea Melido’s article about James Mockoski‘s work to restore The New Klondike for the festival.

Complete details about the festival, the Orinda Theatre, and how you can support their fine work can be found on the San Francisco Silent Film Festival’s website.

Meredith Brody, a graduate of both the Paris Cordon Bleu cooking school and USC film school, has been the restaurant critic for, among others, the Village Voice, LA Weekly, and SF Weekly, and has written for countless film magazines and websites including Cahiers du Cinema, Film Comment, and Indiewire. Her writings on books, theater, television, and travel have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Interview. She also contributes to EatDrinkFilms including her“Meals with Meredith,” where she talks about food and film with filmmakers at restaurants in northern California, writes about vintage cocktails and where she eats during film festivals at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. A selection of her EDF pieces are found here.