Cooking with the “IT!” Girl

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A Supper with Clara Bow curated by Jenny Hammerton.                                                             (March 17, 2026)

I’ve been collecting the favorite recipes of movie stars and trying them out, for over 25 years.  There are a surprising amount of weird and wonderful signature dishes on record in books, magazines and advertising ephemera and my culinary collection now numbers over 10,000.  My favourite celebrity chefs are Vincent Price, Sophia Loren and Yul Brynner, but I have an enduring love for recipes shared by stars of the silent era too.

To celebrate the San Francisco Silent Film Festival’s showing of Clara Bow in “It” at the restored Castro Theatre on Sunday, March 22 accompanied by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra,  I offer you a menu of Clara favorite recipes.  Full screening info and to buy tickets here. 

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Clara Bow Runnin’ Wild- On Making “IT”

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By David Stenn

(Editor’s note:The San Francisco Silent Film Festival will return to the restored Castro Theatre on Sunday, March 22 at 7pm with Clara Bow in “IT” live accompaniment by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. Information and tickets here.  Best selling author David Stenn shares his chapter on the making of “IT” and we have added a gallery of stunning images at the end.)

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Silents Please! and Listen

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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. Continue reading →

Charlie Was My Co-Pilot- Celebrating Chaplin Days

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By Gary Meyer. (May 13, 2025)

“A day without laughter is a day wasted” -Charlie Chaplin

I can’t imagine a more wonderful spring weekend than the Charlie Chaplin Days in Niles (Fremont), California, May 16-18. Starting with a tour of Eugene O’Neill’s house where Chaplin’s wife Oona grew up, the celebration includes plenty of restored Chaplin films made by the Essanay Studio on the big screen  with audiences laughing uncontrollably at times. There are live presentations, rare footage and photos seen for the first time since they were made, walking tours, rides on a vintage diesel train, and the annual Charlie Look-Alike Contest. Continue reading →

Music Hath Charms

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San Francisco’s A Day of Silents Features a Stellar Lineup of Musicians and Films on Sunday, February 2, 2025.

by Meredith Brody.                                                         (January 28,2025)

The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. Photo by Pamela Gentile.

You’ve all heard that silent movies really weren’t SILENT: they all had live musical accompaniment, ranging from a solitary guy at an upright piano or a mighty Wurlitzer to up-to-110-member symphonic orchestras. When Carmine Coppola was about to go on tour in 1981 to conduct his new score for his son Francis Ford Coppola’s restoration of Abel Gance’s 1927 Napoleon, he reminisced about the silent movie palaces of his youth: “”When I was really young,” Mr. Coppola recalled, ”I would go to Broadway to see a movie. I remember  The Thief of Bagdad, with Douglas Fairbanks; he always insisted on an original score. Those theaters – the Strand, the Rialto, the Rivoli, the Capitol – had 40-or 50-piece orchestras. It was so beautiful. I saw the Big Parade that way and What Price Glory and The Three Musketeers. ”

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SILENTS PLEASE-WITH SOUND

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By Gary Meyer.   (April 9, 2024)

The past several years, after the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, many of the attendees compare notes and proclaim the just completed Festival the best ever. Looking at the 2024 schedule I have a hunch that could be said again.

Starting Wednesday, April 10 at the Palace of Fine Arts with a stunning Technicolor restoration of the Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckler THE BLACK PIRATE with live musical accompaniment by the Donald Sosin Ensemble, the Festival will offer 22 programs through Sunday, April 14 featuring popular stars including Clara Bow, Laurel and Hardy, Norma Talmadge, Buster Keaton, Brigitte Helm, and Harold Lloyd. Some big names may be in established classics, but others are in previously “lost” movies or those only available in poor quality prints before these screenings. Continue reading →

Lulu By the Bay

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by Thomas Gladysz

(Updated May 8, 2023 to inclde photos from the May 6th performance)

On Saturday, May 6, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival is set to screen Pandora’s Box at the Paramount theater in Oakland. This legendary silent film, which stars Louise Brooks as Lulu, can rightly be described as a Bay Area favorite. In fact, as exhibition records suggest, Pandora’s Box has been screened more often in the San Francisco Bay Area than anywhere else in the United States.

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“Pandora’s Box” – A Stunning Film on the Big Screen at the Spectacular Paramount

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By Nancy Friedman

(April 25, 2023)

Maligned, misunderstood, and mercilessly censored when it was released in 1929 – and virtually forgotten for the next three decades – Pandora’s Box (Die Büchse der Pandora) is today acknowledged as one of the masterpieces of silent cinema. That honor is attributable in part to the artistry of director Georg Wilhelm Pabst and cinematographer Günther Krampf, two giants of German film. But the film’s real magic resides in the indelible performance of its American star, Louise Brooks, whom the film historian David Thomson has called “one of the most mysterious and potent figures in the history of the cinema.” The British film critic Pamela Hutchinson has said that Brooks – with her impish smile, dancer’s lithe body, and gleaming black helmet of bobbed hair – “both defines the Roaring Twenties and stands outside it. She is timeless.” 

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They Were Calling It the Twentieth Century

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An excerpt from Dana Stevens’ “CAMERA MAN”

(Greatly updated December 3, 2022)

In this genre-defying work of cultural history, the chief film critic of Slate places comedy legend and acclaimed filmmaker Buster Keaton’s unique creative genius in the context of his time.

Buster Keaton will be celebrated at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive during the month of December, 2022. Starting Sunday, December 4 with SHERLOCK JR. and two shorts and continuing through Wednesday, December 21, five features and 15 shorts will be screened with musical accompaniment. Author Dana Stevens will introduce several programs. Continue reading →