Showing posts with label john stahl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label john stahl. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 15, 2019

The 2019 San Francisco Silent Film Festival



After a year hiatus, Peter returns to the Castro Theatre alongside Victor Morton to check back in with the good folks at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, now in their 24th iteration. It's more proof that this cinephile culture is alive and well and always expanding toward new avenues despite its century longevity. This year includes discoveries from both the studio era of filmmaking as well as unique corners of the globe, featuring narratives of fallen women, activist women, and women willing to push their vanity to death itself (also the occasional man). The surprise of the festival in part is seeing this period of history both in its innovations as well as its regressions, which sometimes work to turn seemingly simple works into complex objects. Within this, great artists appear: some known and others now reclaimed. Join Peter and Victor as they work their way through this excellent set of films.

0:00–2:41 Opening
2:42–15:00 The Signal Tower (Clarence Brown, 1924)
16:36–30:56 Tonka of the Gallows (Karel Anton, 1931)
32:11–49:33 Color Extravaganza!
50:30–53:30 Sponsorship Section
54:16–1:05:08 Goona Goona (André Roosevelt and Armand Denis, 1932)
1:06:03–1:24:03 Romance, Comedy and Otherwise
1:24:52–1:37:38 The Wedding March (Erich Von Stroheim, 1928)
1:37:42–1:26:52 Close

Sunday, April 5, 2015

Episode #57 - Kiva Reardon (Leave Her To Heaven)



"Watching movies for me is not a passive experience. It's an active one."

Kiva Reardon isn't one to completely define what her work is, but for the past two years, her new journal cléo has broadened the conversation around cinema and feminism in a unique and exciting way. In this second Toronto-based episode, Kiva talks to Peter about growing up with classic movies, trying to deconstruct pop culture items (including but not limited to: Drake), and the gestural bodily cinema of Claire Denis. They then move onto forming cleo, and why its diversity in terms of both content and form has been one of the key aspects to its success. Finally, Kiva brings in the 1945 Technicolor noir Leave Her To Heaven with Gene Tierney, and the two discuss it as a template for a more recent murderous melodrama: David Fincher's Gone Girl.

0:00-2:00 Opening
3:05-11:44 Establishing Shots - Also Like Life: The Films of Hou Hsiao-Hsien / Donations
12:28-48:35  Deep Focus - Kiva Reardon
49:47-51:27 Mubi Sponsorship - Jean Rollin and Tilda Swinton
53:00 -1:11:26 Double Exposure - Leave Her To Heaven (John M. Stahl)
1:11:30-1:13:34 Close  / Outtakes

Read Kiva Reardon on cléo, Cinema-Scope, The AV Club, and Keyframe Daily. Check out her personal website to follow all her writing. Follow her on Twitter.
Leave Her To Heaven is out on a very nice Blu-Ray via Twilight Time.