A three-day and night experience for those who love film and film making. In 2024, we are showcasing Women in Film, documentaries and locally-made vintage movies - some made more than 100 years ago. We will focus on film collectors and preserving cinematic trifles and treasures - oddities and classics! Film is NOT dead - Long live film! (even if we show some programs digitally because that is how they were created or because we need to show them in a non-nitrate format. All we can say is "It's all good!"

Schedule of Events

July 26, 2024

7:30 pm: Evening Film Presentation

(Doors open 7:00 pm)

The Love Goddesses

(1965, Walter Reade-Sterling Presentation)

Director Saul J. Turrell's exploration of sex in the movies. From the silent era and Clara Bow to Cinemascope and Marilyn Monroe, see how the movie industry's depiction of sex has changed through the decades. Told in a unique, immersive style combining voice over and film clips, The Love Goddesses is a rarely-screened, can't-miss film that encapsulates a unique time in film history.

Preceded by:

The Western Costume Company

(circa 1951, unknown studio)

This noteworthy business has been a landmark in Hollywood for decades. Not only has it been supplying "Western" costumes to movie producers, but costumes, armor, weapons, medals, furniture, and props of all kinds from all periods of history. We are shown through the various department of this huge. facility, and follow a beautiful and fancy costume from its inception on a designer's drawing-board through its assembly end eventual clothing of a model, along with a number of other unusual and beautiful costumes used not only by motion picture studios, but by theatrical and television producers as well.

July 27, 2024

Choose one at 11:00am

Walking Tour of Niles

Wear some shoes you can move about in and find out what happened here one hundred years ago. Important landmarks will be discussed and stories will be shared! Meet at the museum and bring your camera. Includes your own copy of our museum Walking Tour of Niles booklet. ($5 donation)

Screening at the Edison Theater  (Free program)

Broncho Billy: The First Reel Cowboy     

(1998, Arkansas Educational Television Network) This half-hour video details the career of Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson, the very first cowboy movie star who acted in more than 200 silent Westerns and was instrumental in the formation of the genre. His influence is still seen today in films depicting the Old West. We thank the creators of this document for allowing us to screen it in Niles. (Digital presentation)

Followed by The Movies Go West  (1974, Bell) This film from the mid-1970's is one of the first visual explorations of the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company as it existed in Niles 100 years ago. Filmmaker Geoffrey Bell was at the helm for this project, which was narrated by Hal Angus, one of the players at the old studio and husband to the head of the scenario department, Josephine Rector. There are invaluable images of Niles in the 1970's contained in this film, including film taken of the original barn that Gilbert "Broncho Billy" Anderson settled in when first arriving in town, before building a then state-of-the-art studio a block away. (Digital presentation)

1:00 pm

The Women of Essanay

We will screen a selection of Essanay Film Manufacturing Company films made in Chicago and Niles focusing on the feminine. Some of these actors had been making a name for themselves on the theatrical stage, a few had been toiling there for years and others had no experience whatsoever. At Essanay, they were stars, but most of them are not remembered today. We will offer a selection of films that highlight their work, shining a light on them once again. They include, Ethel Clayton, Martha Russell, Dolores Cassinelli, Ruth Stonehouse, Eleanor Blevins, Marguerite Clayton, Evelyn Selbie, Bessie Sankey and Margaret Joslin. We will share stories about others who were instrumental behind the scenes and involved with getting the productions completed.   

Gratitude (1909, Essanay)

The Price of Frame (1910, Essanay)

Two Men and a Girl (1911, Essanay)

From the Submerged (1912, Essanay, 35mm)

Broncho Billy and the Western Girls (1913, Essanay)

The New School Marm of Green River (1913, Essanay, 35mm)

Broncho Billy's Fatal Joke (1914, Essanay)

Snakeville's Champion (1915, Essanay, 35mm)

These film prints are "cut-downs" - not a complete print for various reasons, but the stories are complete.

David Drazin, Piano Accompaniment

3:30 pm

Garbo (2005, Turner Classic Movies)

A special Screening of the documentary produced in 2005, the centenary of the birth of Greta Garbo, one of the most iconic movie stars. Her early years in Sweden, film acting, and life after movies are covered through abundant film excerpts and interviews with family, friends, filmmakers who worked with her, biographers, and journalists.

She left the film business suddenly at age 36 and spent the next half-century trying to avoid fans, the press, and photographers. But she did have a life as an ex-movie-star who remained perpetually famous against her will—and was given the moniker "hermit-about-town". Directors: Kevin Brownlow, Christopher Bird; Producer: Patrick Stanbury Narrated by Julie Christie with music by Carl Davis. (Digital presentation)

Museum closed for Dinner Break  
5:00 - 7:00 pm

Evening Film Presentation   

7:30 pm  (Doors open 7:00 pm)

Flesh And The Devil

(1927, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) In Greta Garbo's breakthrough picture she delivers a luminous performance as a new type of vamp: less consistently cruel and more subtle than earlier styles. Director Clarence Brown recalled, "Flesh and the Devil was my first picture for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and it really made Garbo." Her name was listed under the title, which would change after the film's phenomenal success. She became the most famous woman in the world and the leading film actress.  Starring Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, and Lars Hanson, Directed by Clarence Brown.

Preceded by a salute to Billy Bevan!

The Golf Nut (1927, Mack Sennett Comedies)

(Billy Bevan) Billy as a nutty photographer and golfer, who brings disaster to the links.

Ice Cold CoCos (1926, Mack Sennett Comedies) Billy and Andy impersonate two ice-delivery men in a suburban town. Mayhem ensues.

Jon Mirsalis, Kurzweil Keyboard Accompaniment

July 28, 2024

10:45 am    

Special Behind-the-Scenes REAL vs. REEL program

(Free program)

Vintage Los Angeles film studios expert and special guest Marc Wanamaker will share some behind-the-scenes images and amazing tales of REAL California history intertwined with motion picture history, the REEL kind. He will share images from two recent books he co-authored: Hollywood: Behind the Lens - Treasures from the Bison Archives (with Steven Bingen) and Hollywood's Trains and Trolleys (with Josef Lesser).

12:30pm

Hidden Colors of the California
Nursery and Beyond:
Lenticular Kodacolor Home Movies

(Free program)

Back for its second year, with different films! See rare home movies of the Niles Nursery and beyond in color for the first time in 90 years! Local horticultural historian Janet Barton and our museum's own Zack Sutherland walk you through this long-defunct technique of color film processing, and the resulting footage taken in Niles and elsewhere in California

(High-definition Digital presentation)

David Drazin, Piano Accompaniment

Focus on film Collectors afternoon

2:30 pm

The Isle Of Hope (1925, Richard Talmadge Productions) Film collector Michael Aus was scrolling through eBay one night when he found this formerly-lost film for sale. After acquiring the only print, Aus deposited the film here at our museum - thus giving us an opportunity at this year's festival to demonstrate how film collectors have been essential over the decades to making rare or lost material visible to the public.

The Isle of Hope is a stunt-filled adventure feature film starring Richard Talmadge, a former circus tumbling performer turned movie actor and producer, later turned Hollywood stuntman. Also featured are Helen Ferguson (a former player at the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company in Chicago), James A. Marcus, and George Reed. (High-definition digital presentation)

Silent Oddities on our big screen

We have searched our archives for hidden and forgotten gems, and we've put together a show of some of the best.  We'll start with An Animated Luncheon, filmed in 1900 at Edison's Laboratory, and another "trick film", Enchanted Glasses (Pathe 1905).  Next we'll show a rare cartoon from the Essanay Studio, Dreamy Dud, He Resolves Not To Smoke (1915). Moving on into the 1920's, we'll show several human interest stories from a Hearst newsreel, and close out the session with Dog Comedy: Train Wreck which has an all-animal cast, and is both as cute and as exciting as it sounds.

Bruce Loeb and David Drazin, Piano Accompaniment

4:30 pm

Film is dead. Long live film!

(2024, Cold Eye Films)                                   

This award-winning documentary explores the vanishing world of private film  collecting: an obsessive, secretive, often illicit realm of basement film vaults, piled   high with forgotten reels. Condemned as pirates and hounded by the FBI, film collectors have long lurked in the shadows. Yet their efforts have resulted in the survival of countless films that would otherwise have been lost to history.

Journeying to film festivals, dealer rooms, archives, film storage and workspaces, and ad-hoc Screening rooms, a trove of interviews is amassed which profiles the people involved with collecting and preserving film, underscoring their motivations and legacies. Produced and directed by Peter Flynn. (Digital presentation)

Preceded by short subjects from the museum's archive:

Ringling Brothers Circus Parade (1902) A visiting circus and onlookers in a street scene.

Suzie Loses Her First Tooth (early 1920s) This early example of an infomercial is an animated tale of heroes and villains in a battle over dental hygiene.

Bruce Loeb, Piano Accompaniment for shorts

Special Guest:

Marc Wanamaker is known as an internationally known film historian with the specialty on the History of the Motion Picture Studios in the United States, was a consultant to the Chaplin Estate, contributed to David Robinson's book on Chaplin and was the technical advisor on the motion picture CHAPLIN (1992). We will have a Booksigning of his most recent titles

Hollywood: Behind the Lens - Treasures from the Bison Archives

Marc Wanamaker and Steven Bingen

(2024; Globe Pequot / Lyons Press)

Hollywood's Trains and Trolleys

Marc Wanamaker and Josef Lesser

(2019; Los Angeles Railroad Heritage Foundation)

Our Pianists:

David Drazin is a music and motion picture archivist who has acquired a national reputation for his piano improvisations accompanying silent films. He is notable among contemporary film accompanists for his use of the 1920s-era jazz and blues, rather than classic ragtime, in playing for silent comedies.

Jon c. Mirsalis is a scientist, film historian and silent film accompanist who has been creating silent film scores for over 40 years. He has performed at many venues throughout the u.s. Including the george eastman house, the library of congress, the castro theater in san francisco, the cleveland cinematheque, the academy of motion picture arts and sciences and pacific film archive.  He regularly performs at the niles film museum and the san francisco silent film festival.  He has recorded scores for many video releases for kino international, milestone films, lsvideo, flicker alley, turner classic movies, and other distributors. Some of his released scores include othello, the mark of zorro, don q, son of zorro, a little princess, the ocean waif, the phantom of the opera, woman in the moon, the man from beyond, and many short subjects.  He composed and performed the score for anna may wong: frosted yellow willows (2007), a documentary about actress anna may wong. Mirsalis is also a noted expert on the silent screen star lon chaney, and manages the web site lonchaney.org.  He also has consulted for and assisted with film preservation projects by the library of congress, ucla film archives, and other major film archives.  He is perhaps best known as the person who found the missing reel of laurel & hardy's comedy short, the battle of the century (1927).  In his day job, dr. Mirsalis has ph.d. Degrees in toxicology and genetics, and is a vice president in the biosciences division at sri international in menlo park, ca

Bruce Loeb is an accomplished teacher for both piano and voice. He is available as a piano accompanist for singers, ensembles and silent movies.His deep knowledge of physical movement informs all his work in music.  Bruce is a graduate of UC Berkeley and studied harpsichord, voice and piano at conservatories in Holland and Israel.

He is a creative musician in both his work as a teacher and in creating original piano scores for silent movies. Bruce goes all the way back with us as he played at the first Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival in 1998.

Date:
July 26-28, 2024

Location:
Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum,
37417 Niles Boulevard
Fremont, CA 94536

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