The San Francisco Silent Film Festival, one of the world’s preeminent events dedicated to showcasing and preserving pre-sound era movies, announced it will be moving its 2024 festival to the Palace of Fine Arts after calling the Castro Theatre home since 1996.
The move, according to Artistic Director Anita Monga, could be temporary. And, yet, she told the Chronicle, the festival’s traditional winter program“Day of Silents,”scheduled for Dec. 2, could conceivably be the organization’s final time at the Castro, which is expected to begin a $20 million renovation in early 2024.
“If they do what they say they’re going to do, it will be workable for us,” Monga said. “We would like to be back at the Castro if we can.”
Manga was referring to plans by Another Planet Entertainment, which operates the100-year-old theateron behalf of the Nasser family, which has owned the theater since it opened in 1922. The Berkeley-based concert promotion company plans to remove existing seats, level the raked (sloped) floor and install a three-tiered removable seat system.
Theplans are controversial. Opponents — which included the S.F. Silent Film Festival, headed by Festival Director Stacey Wisnia — say the raked floor and removal of permanent seating will ruin the theater’s historic interior, cut down its current 1,400-seat capacity and possibly impair sightlines. APE and its supporters say the renovations will provide the necessary flexibility to make the venue profitable as a concert and live music venue as well as a movie theater.
After several contentious meetings at City Hall, APEwon approval in Juneto proceed with its renovation plan.
While the company went through the approval process, it said it wasopen for booking through January 2024. Monga said the Silent Film Festival held out hope that the 2024 event, scheduled for April 10-14, could still be held at the Castro before renovations began, but was told that APE was not accepting bookings past Feb. 6.
An email by the Chronicle to an APE spokesperson was not returned by Wednesday afternoon.
The S.F. Silent Film Festival, established by Melissa Chittick andStephen Salmons, has become internationally famous in the film world. There is no comparable event in the United States; perhaps the closest in scope is thePordenone Silent Film Festivalin Northern Italy, which wrapped its 42nd edition this month.
Part of the appeal of the San Francisco event is that silent films are screened with live musical accompaniment in historical theaters that actually showed such films when they were first released. In moving to the Bernard Maybeck-designed Palace of Fine Arts, which was never a dedicated movie house, the festival at least is in a venue from the same era.
The Marina District treasure was built for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition to exhibit works of art, and has since become an internationally known city landmark. Its current seating capacity is 960.
“We’re so pleased to be at the Palace,” Monga said. “The stadium seating is nice, and we have room for our live music.”
The Palace of Fine Arts also does not have the capacity to project 35mm films, which means the Silent Film Festival will be an all-digital festival next year. However, because of the nature of silent film preservation, the festival increasingly has embraced digital projection over the years. In December’s “Day of the Silents” event at the Castro, only one of the six programs — the 1925 Rudolph Valentino hit “The Eagle” — is scheduled to be projected on 35mm.
Tickets for “Day of the Silents” — which also includes the Harold Lloyd comedy “Safety Last!” — are available atsilentfilm.org. The full program for the April 10-14, 2024, festival is to be unveiled in February.
Reach G. Allen Johnson: ajohnson@sfchronicle.com