San Francisco Cinematheque and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and are thrilled to announce a silent movie blockbuster day at the Castro Theatre on Saturday, September 15. Four programs of favorites from the silent era all accompanied by the indefatigable Club Foot Orchestra!

Founded in 1983 by Richard Marriott, Club Foot Orchestra (named after a nightclub in San Francisco's Bayview), was a pioneer in creating modern music for silent film. Their accompaniment is thoughtful and expressive, showing respect and engagement in the images they compose for. Audiences at SFSFF 2013 will remember the extraordinary music Club Foot Orchestra and Gamelan Sekar Jaya set to the Balinese film Legong: Dance of the Virgins. For GREATEST HITS, Club Foot is running a marathon: starting the day out with the sublime Buster Keaton and the mischievous Felix the Cat and veering into the world of German Expressionism with three masterpieces—The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Metropolis, and Nosferatu—Club Foot leads the way into a deeper appreciation for the genius of silent cinema.

Discount admissions for all screenings are available Cinematheque Members.
Please see our Members e-newsletter or contact us for discount code: sfc@sfcinematheque.org.

1pm: Buster + Felix
Live musical accompaniment by Club Foot Orchestra
Advance tickets available here
SFSFF brings together two icons of silent comedy, Buster Keaton and Felix the Cat, for a deliriously wonderful program that will delight universally!! The short films include:
Felix Woos Whoopie (1928, d. Otto Mesmer, 6 mins)
One Week (1920, d. Buster Keaton, Eddie Cline, 23 mins)
The Blacksmith (1922, d. Buster Keaton, Malcolm St. Clair, 23 mins)
Cops (1922, d. Buster Keaton, Eddie Cline, 18 mins)

3:15pm: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920, d. Robert Wiene)
Live musical accompaniment by Club Foot Orchestra
Advance tickets available here
The quintessential German Expressionist film, Caligari takes place in a disorienting landscape where a mad doctor (Werner Krauss) and his sleepwalking captive (Conrad Veidt) commit a series of murders. Writer Michael Atkinso writes, "If cinema came to be the troubled, fanciful, sensual, neurotic unconscious of human culture in the 20th century, feeding us lurid, wild images and scenarios in response to our twisted inner hungers and greatest fears as we simultaneously feed it history, phobias, narcissism, prejudices and lust—if then, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is something like the first nightmare, the first cave painting on the dank walls of modernity." One of the most studied and influential films ever made!

6pm: Metropolis (1927, d. Fritz Lang)
Live musical accompaniment by Club Foot Orchestra
Advance tickets available here
Fritz Lang's expressionist sci-fi masterpiece paints a futuristic dystopia that has had a deep impact on cinema history. Filmmakers like Ridley Scott (Blade Runner), George Lucas (Star Wars), and Tim Burton (Batman Returns), kneel at the alter of Metropolis. With cinematographer Karl Freund and special effects masters Günter Rittau, Konstantin Tschetwerikoff and Eugen Schüfftan employing every fantastic trick of the trade, Metropolis' effects still dazzle. In an extraordinary turn of events, Lang's original version of Metropolis was discovered in a Buenos Aires museum and this—the only extant copy of Lang's original vision—served as the basis for the 2010 restoration that returned 25 minutes to the film!

9:30pm: Nosferatu (1922, d. F.W. Murnau)
Live musical accompaniment by Club Foot Orchestra
Advance tickets available here
Based on Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, filmic details were changed, including the vampire's name, when the producers couldn't secure permission from Stoker's estate. In spite of those changes, Widow Stoker sued and all prints of Nosferatu were ordered destroyed. In one of the most fortuitous slips in film history, the film was in the public domain in the United States due to an error in the copyright notice and so a print that had been shipped to the US before the destroy order was able to preserve this incredible film with its extraordinary lead performance. Max Schreck's otherworldly portrayal of Count Orlok contributed to rumors that he was actually a vampire!