Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Silent Film Festival

This last weekend in San Fran was the 13th annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival at the Castro Theater.



We saw The Patsy starring Marion Davies and directed by 5 time Oscar nominated King Vidor, who holds the Guinness World record for longest running career as a director- spanning 8 decades. The movie was actually awesome- a 20's comedy I think refreshing because of most of the crap comedy we get in theaters today. I suppose the style of comedy was almost slapstick- and clever.

The other highlight of the night was the live accompaniment of music, done so by Mr. Clark Wilson on a Mighty Wurlitzer organ. Having the musician in the room means the experience is organic, like seeing live theatre instead of a movie- anything can happen on the spot as perhaps the audience's reaction affects how the musician plays, and how the musician plays affects how the audience reacts- a mutual experience. This mutual experience theme is interesting to me and is addressed in a movie I was part of making for Sam Green and Kevin Epp's doc class at USF, called Ruins of the Past and Present.

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