SFCINEMATHEQUE

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Thursday, May 2, 2019, 5:00 pm

Cinematheque Co-Presentations at San Francisco Silent Film Festival

Featuring EARTH and L'INFERNO

CASTRO THEATRE

429 Castro Street

San Francisco, CA 94114





San Francisco Silent Film Festival


Presented May 1–5 at the Castro Theatre


The 2019 San Francisco Silent Film Festival features 25 programs—all with live musical accompaniment. Cinematheque is honored to co-present two screenings at SFSFF 2019. Special discount admissions for Cinematheque Members!


Pictured above: L'Inferno (1911) by Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan and Giuseppe de Liguoro


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CO-PRESENTATION 1
Thursday, May 2 at 5pm
Earth (Zemlya)
Musical accompaniment by the Matti Bye Ensemble
Advance tickets available here.
Members contact Cinematheque for discount code: sfc@sfcinematheque.org
Join the Facebook event.


The third installment of Dovzhenko’s “Ukraine Trilogy,” Earth is his masterpiece. Peasants and rich landowners come into conflict when a tractor, a gift of the Bolshevik government, disrupts a village’s traditional economic order. Given as an assignment to portray agricultural collectivization in a positive light, the director reached far beyond propaganda to create a bittersweet paean to the fertile Ukrainian countryside and its people who have always worked the land. 'So moved am I by Dovzhenko’s film,' wrote British film critic Paul Rotha at the time, 'that I find it difficult to express in words the full meaning of the moving images that are at once lovely in themselves, lovely in sequence and lovely as a unified work of art.' Soviet authorities could not abide the film and pulled it from theaters just days after it premiered. Exquisitely shot, humane, and heartfelt, Earth has been chosen time and again as one of the most important silent films ever made. (San Francisco Silent Film Festival)
Full program details here.


Earth.4


Pictured above: Earth (1930) by Aleksandr Dovzhenko 


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CO-PRESENTATION 2
Saturday, May 4 at 9:15pm
L'Inferno
Musical accompaniment by the Matti Bye Ensemble with intertitle narration by Paul McGann
Advance tickets available here.
Members contact Cinematheque for discount code: sfc@sfcinematheque.org
Join the Facebook event.


A tour through the Nine Circles of Hell, Inferno from 1911 depicts the first part of Dante’s 14th century epic poem The Divine Comedy in such vivid imagery even nonbelievers might find themselves lurching toward the confessional. Its elaborate tableaux and stunning special effects took two years to produce, with exorbitant production costs unheard of at the time. One of a flurry of films made in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Italy’s Risorgimento, Inferno caught the attention of the country’s intelligentsia who had previously dismissed movies as mere novelty. “A noble example,” said one after the film’s premiere, “of wanting to distance itself from the vulgarities of which we are all sated by now.” Enhanced by Cineteca di Bologna’s pristine restoration of the original tinting and toning this presentation of Inferno is not to be missed. An international blockbuster, it incited the rest of the world to try to produce films of equal ambition. (San Francisco Silent Film Festival)
Full program details here.