Movie Screenings - At Long Last - Are Back!

Much of this blog over the past 15+ years has been devoted to plugging screenings. Love classic movies, so am quite pleased to finish 2022 going to actual public screenings. Movie events we love in Northern California and have promoted repeatedly here: silent movies at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, the Psychotronix Film Festival, Noir City and San Francisco Silent Film Festival. The Psychotronix shows, at Foothill College and the Orinda Theatre, express a love of film humor, intentional and unintentional, in all its forms



After experiencing an extended period that included a year of lockdown and NO SCREENINGS, ZERO, NONE (!!!) for way too long, it boggles the mind that there are actually two classic film events in one geographic area on the same day.



Next Saturday A Day Of Silents plays the Castro Theatre while the Psychotronix Film Festival presents its 2022 Christmas show at the Orinda Theatre. Here’s a cool trailer promoting the latter. . .



Now, in all honesty, the guy who writes this blog co-founded the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival with Sci Fi Bob Ekman and KFJC’s intrepid movie soundtrack expert Robert Emmett back in 1992.



Bob Wilkins/Creature Features historian and publisher of Planet X magazine Scott Moon of Cinema Insomnia joined the merry band of psychotronic 16mm purveyors in 1997.



After yours truly moved to upstate New York, Sci Fi Bob and Scott have carried on and continue to carry on the Psychotronix spirit and brand with a series of shows at the Orinda Theatre, beginning in 2016.

I'm very proud of the work I did with Sci Fi Bob and Scott, both talented, knowledgeable, resourceful and inspired film collector/curator/programmers.



We shall return to Foothill College for the 30th Anniversary KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival on December 10!

Also on December 3, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival presents A Day Of Silents at San Francisco's Castro Theatre.



There will be tributes to Sessue Hayakawa in The Cheat, Anna May Wong in The Toll Of The Sea, and the new SFSFF/Cinématheque Française restoration of the 1921 film Pour Don Carlos starring Parisian producer-director-scriptwriter-actress Musidora.



Hands-down, our favorite from A Day Of Silents is Marion Davies and William Haines in King Vidor's Show People.



The tribute to Davies, the great movie comedienne of silents and early talkies, will be introduced by biographer Lara Gabrielle, author of Captain of Her Soul: The Life of Marion Davies.

If you are a blog reader geographically in the greater San Francisco Bay Area on December 3, we suggest doing both events - first checking out the early shows of A Day Of Silents.

And then, it's time to head for the Orinda Theatre to see the Christmas Psychotronix.



In closing, we note that the excellent Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum has re-opened and is doing programs every other Saturday at the Edison Theater!