Curated by Gary Meyer
Noir City returns to the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland, CA from January 15 through January 25, 2026 with a grand line-up of film sharing a musical theme. We bring you a gallery of posters, stills, and trailers from the festival for the first half of the Festival.
Anticipating This Year’s Music-Themed Fest With Delight
by Meredith Brody. (January 13,2026)
I love Eddie Muller’s Noir City film festivals; I don’t think I’ve missed a one since his first edition in Los Angeles at the American Cinematheque in 1999, four years before SF’s first Noir City.
I start out perusing the list of 24 films (paired in a dozen double bills) in my usual somewhat-blinkered and mildly narcissistic fashion: which ones are new to me? Since I’ve been seeking out film noir since before I went to college, and my first post-college publication in book form was in Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward’s first “Encyclopedia of Film Noir” back in 1979, it’s not totally a surprise that there are only two that qualify: the British Face the Music aka The Deadly Glove (1954), and The Crimson Canary (1945), neither of which I’ve even heard of.
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
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. ”
From the depths of Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s laboratory comes 50 culinary concoctions to titillate the taste buds of Rocky Horror fans, in this lip-smacking officially licensed cookbook based on the cult classic stage musical.
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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
By Nancy Friedman
(April 24, 2023)
How many times has Richard Marriott seen Pandora’s Box? When I suggested 50, he said that number was conservative. “Probably double that,” he guessed.
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
By C.J. Hirschfield October 8, 2022
Xavier. Amin. Andrew. Blood Sugar X. Oakland’s Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter, born Xavier Dphrepaulezz and now known as Fantastic Negrito has had many names, and even more lives. The new documentary Fantastic Negrito: Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?, which has its world premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival, traces his remarkable and unlikely journey, telling the story in chronological order, interspersed with song tracks and jam sessions that feature his unique blues/R&B/roots music. It all comes together beautifully. Continue reading
By Brian Darr
May 19, 2022
In 2014 John Davis produced a double-album entitled Gravity Spells: Bay Area New Music and Expanded Cinema Art, which presented sound recordings made by himself as well as Maggi Payne, Tashi Wada, Ashley Beloun and Ben Bracken, paired with accompanying DVDs featuring work by local moving image artists Lawrence Jordan, Craig Baldwin, Paul Clipson and Kerry Laitala. The release was accompanied by four weekend performances at the Kala Art institute in Berkeley, and the discs quickly sold out.
Now nearly eight years later there’s a sequel release, Gravity Spells II involving an entirely new slate of Bay Area sound artists and filmmakers. This time around the performances celebrating the release will all be held May 19-22 at venerable Mission District venue The Lab. Only the artists know quite what to expect, but they’re sure to present a unique live cinema experiences.
Part Two- What I Will Be Seeing
By Meredith Brody
May 4, 2022
I learned my lesson early with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival: GO TO EVERYTHING.
The first year I attended, I cherry-picked only the movies I hadn’t seen before. The ones I went to were such a revelation – both in the presentation and the group experience – that my heart hurt as I walked away. What a MAROON I was. Even a movie I thought I knew well would be a fresh experience, featuring as it did not only live music, but one of the world’s great audiences. There’s a kind of euphoria that sets in when you commit to seeing everything on offer.
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