The line-up for the 2026 San Francisco Silent Film Festival has been announced. This year, the festival returns to its "ancestral home" at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. (The historic venue has been closed for a couple of years due to renovations.) The festival was begun at the Castro in 1996 and has grown from a one-day event to the largest and most prestigious festival devoted to silent cinema in all of the Americas.
This year's festival (which takes place May 6 - 10) includes 26 films from six different countries featuring 22 musicians from far and wide. Altogether, there will be 22 programs over five days, all with live musical accompaniment—including the free "Amazing Tales From the Archives" show! Many of the films are recent restorations, including two that SFSFF has had a direct hand in, William de Mille's Miss Lulu Bett (a terrific film deserving greater recognition) and Lewis Milestone's The Caveman. Both titles were the restoration handiwork of our friends at Artcraft Pictures, James Mockoski and Robert Harris, in collaboration with Paramount Archives. (Hmmm, I wonder if they are working on any of Louie Brooks' Paramount silents?)
The San Francisco Silent Film Festival Award for commitment to the preservation and presentation of silent cinema will be presented to Elżbieta Wysocka of the Filmoteka Narodowa at the screening of the Polish masterpiece Janko the Musician on Saturday, May 9.
Among this year's highlights is the new restoration of Queen Kelly (1929). The film's star, Gloria Swanson, was one of Louise Brooks' favorite actresses since the time Brooks was a teen. Additionally, its director, Eric von Stroheim, whom Brooks once met, was someone the actress was greatly interested in later in life. As a devotee of von Stroheim, I have had the pleasure of seeing an earlier restoration of Queen Kelly. It is an intriguing if not flawed (and unfinished) film.
Queen Kelly opens the festival. Closing the festival is one of the greatest films of the silent era, King Vidor's The Crowd (1928). Of note to fans of Louise Brooks is the fact that a few scenes from this film were shot on Coney Island, at Luna Park, just as scenes from Just Another Blonde (1926) had been. (To give you a taste, be sure and check out this page about Just Another Blonde location shooting.)
On a personal note, I can report that I was asked to write the program essay for two films at this year's festival. Both are well worth checking out. The first is Sensation in Wintergarten (1929) -- which features the intriguing Erna Morena (who has the distinction of having starred in the title roles of earlier versions of two later Louise Brooks films, Lulu (1917) and Diary of a Lost Woman (1918), later filmed under the title The Diary of a Lost Girl). The other is The White Trail (1932) -- a surprisingly engaging indie film made by a non-filmmaker from Poland.
From the San Francisco Silent Film Festival website, here is the 2026 line-up:
Wednesday May 6 | 7:00 pm | $30 general / $25 member
QUEEN KELLY
Directed by Erich von Stroheim | US, 1929 |105 m
With Gloria Swanson, Walter Byron, Serena Owen, Tully Marshall
The late silent-era masterpiece that never was and the last major production entrusted to Erich von Stroheim has been reconstructed from surviving footage by Milestone Films. Bearing all the Stroheim hallmarks—lush visuals, meticulous attention to every detail, and rank corruption at every level of society—it’s also a showcase for Gloria Swanson who runs an emotional gamut from innocent convent girl to hardened brothel keeper. Musical accompaniment by composer Eli Denson conducting the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra
from Queen Kelly
Thursday May 7 | 11:00 am | Free
AMAZING TALES FROM THE ARCHIVES
Our Amazing Tales program began in 2006 as a way to highlight the importance of film preservation and to provide insight into the remarkable work done by film archives around the world. Since then it has become one of the most highly anticipated programs in the festival. And it's free! This year's presenters:
KYLE WESTPHAL of the Chicago Film Society presents the case of comedian Jimmy Aubrey and A Musical Mixup produced at Weiss Bros. studio in Los Angeles.
Danish Film Institute’s THOMAS CHRISTENSEN shares the marvels of silent cinema’s inventive on-screen gadgetry.
ANDREAS THEIN of Filmmuseum Düsseldorf stretches our notions of Weimar cinema with the “Sensationsfilm” genre starring Germany’s first action heroes.
CARLO CHATRIAN of the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin digs into the archeology of cinema and how it shaped the movies as we know them.
Thursday May 7 | 3:00 pm | $20 general / $18 member
THE ABYSS
Original Language Title: AFGRUNDEN
Directed by Urban Gad | Denmark, 1910 | 38 m.
With Asta Nielsen, Poul Reumert, Robert Dinesen
THE CLOWN Original Language Title: KLOVNEN
Directed by A.W. Sandberg | Denmark, 1917 | 62 m. (100 m. total program)
With Valdemar Psilander, Peter Fjelstrup, Amanda Lund
Two Danish sensations, one at the beginning of her career, the other at his end. First, Asta Nielsen’s prim piano teacher in The Abyss is driven by lust to the circus stage faster than her gyrating Spider Dance from this film made her a star. Next, matinee idol Valdemar Psilander’s sad circus performer in The Clown hits the big time only for success to lead to his ruin in what turned out to be the actor’s last production before his sudden death at age 32. Musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne and Mas Koga
Thursday May 7 | 5:30 pm | $20 general / $18 member
SENSATION IM WINTERGARTEN
Directed by Gennaro Righelli | Germany, 1929 | 102 m.
With Paul Richter, Claire Rommer, Erna Morena, Gaston Jacquet
When celebrated trapeze artist Frattani returns home on his triumphant world tour, he must finally face his gold-digging stepfather who deprived him of his rightful title, his inheritance, and the love of his own mother years before. Dramatic set-pieces and colorful backstage atmosphere are partly filmed at Berlin’s storied Wintergarten. Musical accompaniment by Guenter Buchwald and Frank Bockius
from Sensation in Wintergarten
Thursday May 7 | 8:00 pm | $25 general / $23 member
MISS LULU BETT
Directed by William de Mille | US, 1921 | 80 m.
With Lois Wilson, Milton Sills, Theodore Roberts, Helen Ferguson
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama by women’s rights champion Zona Gale about an acquiescent young woman callously exploited by her own family, Miss Lulu Bett was called “one of the finest adaptations in the history of the photoplay” by Motion Picture News. Restored from a nitrate print, this marks the first in a dedicated run of collaborations between director William de Mille and scriptwriter Clara Beranger. Musical accompaniment by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
Friday May 8 | 11:00 am | $20 general / $18 member
HIGH TREASON
Directed by Maurice Elvey | UK, 1929 | 75 m.
With Benita Hume, Jameson Thomas, Basil Gill, Humberston Wright
The future brings aerocopters, videochat boxes, and apparently the same headgear across genders, but all the gadgetry in the world cannot save humankind from its destructive self as it teeters on the brink of war after a terrorist act. High Treason simultaneously looks back to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and forward to Michael Radford’s 1984 but what this prescient piece of science fiction grasps on its own is that the fate of nations can pivot on the act of a single person. Musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne and Frank Bockius
Friday May 8 |1:00 pm | $20 general / $18 member
THE WHITE TRAIL
Original Language Title: BIAŁY ŚLAD
Directed by Adam Krzeptowski | Poland, 1932 | 74 m.
With Andrzej Krzeptowski, Janina Fischer, Stanislaw Gasienica-Sieczka
A handheld camera puts you breathtakingly close to the action on the snowy slopes of the Polish Tatras in this feature film debut from photographer and native highlander Adam Krzeptowski. Real-life ski champions populate the cast and its script was contributed by local artist Rafał Malczewski, who was well-acquainted with the beauty and hazards of these landscapes having served as part of the Tatra Volunteer Search and Rescue during World War I. The film represented Poland at the first Venice Film Festival. Musical accompaniment by Guenter Buchwald
from The White Trail
Friday May 8 | 3:00 pm | $20 general / $18 member
HULA
Directed by Victor Fleming| US, 1927 | 65 m.
With Clara Bow, Clive Brook, Arlette Marchal
Growing up tomboy on her family’s Hawaiian ranch, wild child Hula Calhoun is as comfortable eating with her hands as she is on horseback. Then she falls head over heels—with a married man. In her second collaboration with director Victor Fleming Clara Bow lights up every frame she’s in, demonstrating again that, yes, she’s a natural but also a real pro. Musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne
from Hula
Friday May 8 | 5:00 pm | $20 general / $18 member
JAPANESE PAPER FILM PROJECT
Japan, 1930s | 65 m.
Animal Olympics, a train excursion through the countryside, a brawl with an octopus, and belly-drumming raccoon-dogs are just a few of the delights of these recently preserved kami firumu. Faced with the influx of ever slicker imported animation in the 1930s Japan went low-tech, printing films on paper strips then gluing them together by hand. The Japanese Paper Film Project worked with Japanese museums, film archives, and individual collectors to digitize and preserve more than 200 surviving films from which this selection was taken.Musical accompaniment by Duo Yumeno
Friday May 8 | 7:00 pm | $25 general / $23 member
THE CAVEMAN
Directed by Lewis Milestone | US, 1926 | 76 m.
With Marie Prevost, Matt Moore, Phyllis Haver, Myrna Loy, Hedda Hopper
Myra the heiress is bored. What else to do but grab a he-man from the tenements and pass him off as a professor? This gender-reversed Pygmalion is one of three comedies made by Marie Prevost with director Lewis Milestone who knew that sometimes all you need to get a laugh is the right camera position—and the devil’s favorite coquette in a starring role. With Matt Moore as a hilarious fish-out-of-water coalheaver and Myrna Loy as the wary maid. Musical accompaniment by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
Friday May 8 | 8:45 pm | $20 general / $18 member
TABU: A STORY OF THE SOUTH SEAS
Directed by F.W. Murnau | US, 1931 | 85 m.
With Matahi, Reri, Hitu, Jean, Jules, Kong Ah
At the top of his artistic game, the director who had perfected the artifice of cinematic atmospheres abandoned the studio and its harrying producers to make a movie en plein air. Working with nonprofessional actors and a skeleton crew that included documentarian Robert Flaherty, F.W. Murnau spent more than a year and all his money in the South Sea islands for what turned out to be his last film.
Musical accompaniment by Wayne Barker and Mas Koga
Saturday May 9 | 10:00 am | $20 general / $18 member
LAUREL AND HARDY: THEIR SILENT BEST
US, 1927–1929
Whether it’s a truckful of pies, a suburban home, a motorcar, or their pants, there’s only one possible outcome when these two virtuosos focus their powers of destruction on a prop: audiences destroyed by laughter. With The Battle of the Century, The Finishing Touch, Liberty, and Big Business. Musical accompaniment by Wayne Barker and Frank Bockius
Saturday May 9 | 12:00 noon | $20 general / $18 member
THE HUMMING BIRD
Directed by Sidney Olcott | US, 1924 | 60 m.
With Gloria Swanson, Edmund Burns, William Ricciardi, Cesare Gravina,
(Mostly) shedding her clotheshorse image, Gloria Swanson is convincing as the head of a gang of Parisian toughs who sets out to stymie an American reporter’s investigation into a spate of neighborhood robberies. First love, then duty intervenes. Veteran director Sidney Olcott leads a team that kits out Paramount’s Astoria studio into a convincing Montmartre. Musical accompaniment by Wayne Barker
Saturday May 9 | 2:00 pm | $20 general / $18 member
JANKO THE MUSICIAN
Original Language Title: JANKO MUZYKANT
Directed by Ryszard Ordynski | Poland, 1930 | 105 m
With Stefan Rogulski, Witold Conti, Maria Malika, Aleksander Zabczynski
In the original story, a classic of Polish literature, a musical prodigy born into poverty meets only tragedy. In this screen adaptation from the late silent era, he’s allowed to thrive. Beautifully photographed by Zbigniew Gniazdowski, the film’s resulting lyricism spurred one critic to write: “The visual symphony Janko the Musician resonates with poetry.” Musical accompaniment by Guenter Buchwald, Mas Koga, and Frank Bockius
from Janko the Musician
Saturday May 9 | 4:45 pm | $20 general / $18 member
BED AND SOFA
Original Language Title: TRETYA MESCHANSKAYA
Directed by Abram Room | USSR | 91 m
With Nikolai Batalov, Lyudmila Semyonova, Vladimir Fogel
The housing shortages plaguing the ten-year-old Communist government instigate the plot in this thoroughly modern Soviet silent classic about a married couple who must find a new design for living after the husband’s former Red Army buddy comes to stay. Among the Bolsheviks’ early promises of land, peace, and bread was also the promise of a new social order that would make comrades of all Russians, including its women. Musical accompaniment by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
Saturday May 9 | 7:00 pm | $25 general / $23 member
HIS GREATEST BLUFF
Original Language Title: SEIN GRÖßTER BLUFF
Directed by Harry Piel | Germany, 1927 | 108 m
With Harry Piel, Albert Paulig, Marlene Dietrich, Fritz Greiner
More than seventy movies later and Harry Piel knew well how to entertain an audience without the chiaroscuro lighting and skewed perspectives we expect of Weimar cinema. Jewels worth a million, a shady dame (and her very sus child), a pair of maharajahs, slick-haired crooks with colorful names, and a self-assured action hero do the trick. That Marlene Dietrich is the dame is just icing for this heist picture from one of Germany’s most consistent box-office draws. Musical accompaniment by Guenter Buchwald and Frank Bockius
Saturday May 9 | 9:30 pm | $20 general / $18 member
Á PROPOS DE NICE
Directed by Jean Vigo and Boris Kaufman | France, 1930 | 25 m
RIEN QUE LES HEURES
Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti | France, 1926 | 46 m (Total program; 71 m)
Two debuts announce the arrival of two fresh voices of the motion picture avant-garde. While dazzling with daring compositions and inventive editing, first-time directors Jean Vigo (working with Dziga Vertov’s brother Boris Kaufman) and Alberto Cavalcanti reveal what can get obscured behind polished photographic surfaces in these city symphony films from Nice and Paris. Musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne and Frank Bockius
Sunday May10 | 11:00 am | $20 general / $18 member
BLAZING DAYS
Directed by William Wyler | US, 1927 | 60 m
With Fred Humes, Ena Gregory, Churchill Ross, Bruce Gordon, Eva Thatcher
This William Wyler-directed western displays the young director’s burgeoning talent, with camera flourishes and character touches that elevate an otherwise familiar story about a payroll box gone missing in the hinterlands. Cowboy star Fred Humes’s beaming smile and humbleswagger on horseback only add to its pleasures. Musical accompaniment by Wayne Barker
Sunday May10 | 1:00 pm | $20 general / $18 member
BOOKKEEPER KREMKE
Original Language Title: LOHNBUCHHALTER KREMKE
Directed by Marie M. Harder | Germany, 1930 | 60 m
With Hermann Vallentin, Anna Sten, Ivan Koval-Samborski
“Problems of our time come alive shaking us to our core,” wrote the reviewer for Lichtbild-Bühne who was deeply impressed with the only fiction feature completed by director Marie Harder, head of the Social Democrat Party’s film service. Ukrainian-born Anna Sten makes her German cinema debut as a daughter coming into her own despite the fury of her tradition-bound father suddenly downsized from middle-class respectability. Musical accompaniment by Guenter Buchwald and Frank Bockius
Sunday May10 | 3:00 pm | $20 general / $18 member
SO THIS IS PARIS
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch | US, 1926 | 68 m
With Monte Blue, Patsy Ruth Miller, André Beranger, Lilyan Tashman
Paris and its Jazz Age temptations provide the saucy backdrop of this confection about the near infidelities of two married couples. A tonic for any age Lubitsch’s last film for the Warners bears no visible marks of the contentious behind-the-scenes relationship the director had with the Bros. who were apparently immune to his charms. We guarantee you won’t be. “Lubitsch,” raved the New York American, “has done it again.” Musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne and Frank Bockius
Sunday May10 | 5:00 pm | $20 general / $18 member
LOVE ONE ANOTHER
Original Language Title: DIE GEZEICHNETEN
Directed by Carl Th. Dreyer | Germany, 1922 | 99 m
With Vladimir Gajdarov, Polina Piekowskaja, Richard Boleslawski
A cynical tsarist agent sews suspicion among peasants about Jews trying to replace them in order to weaken the revolutionary fervor gaining strength in the cities. Meanwhile one young woman from the shtetl just wants a say in her fate. Carl Dreyer’s moving depiction of anti-Semitism’s sinister harms, both macro and micro, is a silent-era rarity, yet typical in the care the director takes to attain a harrowing authenticity. Musical accompaniment by Guenter Buchwald, Mas Koga, and Sascha Jacobsen
Sunday May10 | 7:30 pm | $25 general / $23 member
THE CROWD
Directed by King Vidor | US, 1928 | 102 m
With James Murray, Eleanor Boardman, Bert Roach
In the film that influenced everyone from Orson Welles and Vittorio de Sica to Yasujiro Ozu and the makers of Mad Men, John Sims struggles to reconcile the greatness he expects from his life with the pedestrian way it turns out. Deftly combining documentary style shooting with the kind of artifice only possible with the latest studio technology, King Vidor dissects the American dream in this incontestable masterpiece of silent cinema. Musical accompaniment by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
from The Crowd
THE LEGAL STUFF: The Louise Brooks Society™ blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society (www.pandorasbox.com). Original content copyright © 2026. Further unauthorized use prohibited. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
