PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Rob Byrne, president of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

To listen to the interview, click on the ► icon on the right, just above the picture

FRED interviews Rob Byrne, president of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, at the 36th Pordenone Silent Film Festival (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto). He introduces the San Francisco Silent Film Festival as a celebration of films from the first thirty years of cinema, which, as he explains, was a rich period of technnical advancement and cultural understanding of what could be done with the medium. Among the titles he lists that were screened in San Francisco at this year’s edition of the festival, he mentioned Now We’re In the Air. This was a film directed by Frank R. Strayer in 1927, and is on the “most wanted list” due to it featuring the great silent film actress Louise Brooks. As Byrne explains, many of her American films are considered lost or only exist in fragments, which is why even only twenty minutes of Now We’re in the Air (this was the version that was screened in San Francisco and in Pordenone) is so special. Finally, he shares with us his opinions from this year’s Pordenone Silent Film Festival, and comments on the exhibition of silent films by saying: “I think you can get away with [watching] modern films on a smaller screen, but silent films were made to be seen big.”

For the official website of the festival, click here.