Cinema News: The first Los Angeles Silent Film Festival

September 12, 2025 | View in browser

By Mark Olsen

Staff Writer

Hello! I'm Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

Team LAT wrapped up another trip to Toronto this week, seeing a lot of movies, talking to a lot of people and bringing as much of it as we can to you.

Christina House took a truly epic number of portraits of an impossibly good-looking group of people, including Angelina Jolie, Jacob Elordi, Tessa Thompson, Sydney Sweeney, Elle Fanning, Renate Reinsve, Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried, Dustin Hoffman, America Ferrera, Sigourney Weaver, Kerry Washington, Kirsten Dunst, Paul Mescal, Jodie Foster and many more.

Amy Nicholson filed two dispatches from the festival. One covered films such as Rian Johnson's "Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery," Jan Komasa's "Good Boy," and Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol's extremely Toronto-set "Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie." The other considered Benny Safdie's "The Smashing Machine," David Michôd's "Christy," Nia DaCosta's "Hedda" and Guillermo del Toro's "Frankenstein."

Joshua Rothkopf spoke to filmmaker Oliver Laxe about his new project, "Sirât," which first premeired earlier this year at Cannes and is quietly gaining fans on the festival circuit.

I spoke to Cooper Hoffman and Andrew Barth Feldman about bringing the dynamics of their real-life friendship to the screen in Maude Apatow's directing debut, "Poetic License."

Also I chatted with Aziz Ansari the day after the world premiere of his feature directing debut, "Good Fortune," which features Keanu Reeves as an angel attempting to correct a mistake after he switches the lives of a food-delivery driver (Ansari) and a wealthy tech investor (Seth Rogen).

We also created a whole series of interview videos, talking to the teams behind films such as "Couture," "Eleanor the Great," "Christy," "Blue Moon," "Tuner," "The Lost Bus," "Roofman" and many of the films mentioned above.

The first Los Angeles Silent Film Festival

This weekend will see the launch of the first Los Angeles Silent Film Festival, presented by the American Cinematheque in partnership with Retroformat Silent Films and Mount Saint Mary's University with screenings at the Los Feliz 3. All shows will have live musical accompaniments and the series will feature nine films, including the premieres of six new restorations and assorted shorts.

"There is nothing quite like a silent film with live music," said Tom Barnes, founder of Retroformat Silent Films, a local nonprofit dedicated to promoting the legacy of silent cinema. "It's a very magical experience and unfortunately one that very few people in the world have actually gotten a chance to experience. We're very lucky in Southern California that we have opportunities like this. It's an extremely powerful form of cinema, unique in its own way, and it has its own kind of magic."

With a programming team that includes prominent archivists and historians Stephen K. Hill, Randy Haberkamp and Marc Wanamaker, the series will open with a 100th anniversary screening of Sam Taylor and Fred C. Newmeyer's "The Freshman" starring Harold Lloyd. The evening's program will also include personal home movies from the Harold Lloyd family, with a special award being presented to Lloyd's granddaughter, Suzanne Lloyd. Also on Friday will be a restoration world premiere of Victor Sjöström's 1924 "He Who Gets Slapped."

Saturday will feature 100th anniversary screenings of new restorations of Frank Tuttle's "Lovers in Quarantine" and King Vidor's "The Big Parade." Tuttle's 1926 "Kid Boots," starring Eddie Cantor and Clara Bow, will also screen.

William Desmond Taylor's 1918 "Up the Road With Sallie," starring Constance Talmadge and screening on Sunday, may be the truest rarity in the program, having hardly been seen since its initial run. Taylor's own work as a director has now largely been overshadowed by the mysterious circumstances of his death in 1922.

Before Sunday's screening of James Cruz's 1924 "The Enemy Sex," there will be a presentation of an award for scholarship to historian and author Anthony Slide. The festival will conclude with Paul Leni's 1928 "The Man Who Laughs."

"Just give it a try," say Barnes for those who may be uninitiated in watching silent films. "What happened during the silent film era — which was roughly 30 years, a very short time — actually set the tone for the entire history of film. All the techniques of editing and camerawork, how a film is written, acting for the camera, all of that got worked out in the silent era.

"There's a fascinating sense of history about it all," Barnes added. "By 1927, 1928, when the silent era was ending, they really had it figured out. The greatest of those films absolutely stand up today."

'Linda Linda Linda' in 4K

Japanese filmmaker Nobuhiro Yamashita's 2005 comedy "Linda Linda Linda" is being rereleased in a 4K restoration to celebrate its 20th anniversary. Opening at the Laemmle NoHo 7 this week, the film will later screen at the Alamo Drafthouse DTLA and the Frida Cinema starting on the 19th. (And yes, local L.A. band the Linda Lindas took their name from the film.)

Garnering comparisons over the years to films such as "School of Rock," "Josie and the Pussycats" and Lukas Moodysson's "We Are the Best!," the film follows a group of four girls (including Doona Bae, who would go on to appear in Bong Joon Ho's "The Host") hastily forming a band for their high school talent show.

Writing about the film in 2007, Dennis Lim said, "Yamashita has already established himself as Japan's answer to Jim Jarmusch or Richard Linklater." Lim added, "The film takes its sweet time getting to the requisite triumphant performance, and the climax, set in a less-than-packed auditorium, is all the more remarkable for its modesty. The girls have learned a song, they've learned to play it together, and for three euphoric minutes, nothing else matters."

Points of interest

'The Neon Demon'

It seems hard to believe that Nicolas Winding Refn's 2016 "The Neon Demon" came out almost 10 years ago, and harder still to believe NWR has not directed a feature film since, working instead on two streaming series. (And it's welcome news indeed that he is said to be at work on a new film, "Her Private Hell.") "The Neon Demon" plays on Wednesday at Brain Dead Studios.

With a cast that includes Elle Fanning, Abbey Lee, Bella Heathcote, Jena Malone, Christina Hendricks, Alessandro Nivola and Keanu Reeves, the film follows a young woman (Fanning) who arrives in Los Angeles with dreams of making it as a model. Encountering a world of competition, exploitation and manipulation, she begins to achieve success even as she descends into an increasingly hallucinatory and mystical realm.

Reviewing the film, Justin Chang wrote, "A surreal urban fairy tale, 'The Neon Demon' unfolds in a murderously debauched corner of the Los Angeles fashion industry, one prowled by predatory beasts, silky-smooth operators and gorgeous blonde vampires on stiletto heels. Languorously paced and literally dressed to kill, the movie is a corrosive attack on beauty — or at least our soulless, corporatized definition of the term — but it is also, above all else, a hypnotically beautiful object."

I spoke to Refn and much of the cast about the project at the time, even spending some time on set during production. I asked Reeves, who plays a sleazy motel manager, to explain the film's title: Is it about fame, a spirit world — just who or what is the "neon demon"?

"We're all the neon demon," Reeves said with playful ominousness.

'Four Nights of a Dreamer' in 4K

On Sunday, the American Cinematheque will host the Los Angeles premiere of a new 4K restoration of Robert Bresson's 1971 "Four Nights of a Dreamer," an adaptation of Dostoevsky's "White Nights."

Capturing the romantic magic of the nighttime world, the film concerns a young artist (Guillaume des Forêts) who roams the streets of Paris alone. One evening, he saves a young woman (Isabelle Weingarten) from drowning and then becomes obsessed with her.

Appearing as extras in the movie are film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, who wrote about the experience for the Village Voice, and future filmmaker Claire Denis.

Writing about the film in January 1973, Kevin Thomas said, "While [Bresson] is to be commended for taking young love seriously, he makes it hard to becomes very involved with his young lovers, so relentlessly solemn, so totally unsmiling — so thoroughly miserable — are they. In short, it's tough to accept Bresson's conception of falling in love as being so absolutely akin to be burned at the stake."

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In other news

'Jaws' exhibit at the Academy Museum

Josh Rottenberg went to the press preview event at the Academy Museum for the new exhibition on 1975's "Jaws," which includes costumes, props and other assorted ephemera from the making of the movie.

Director Steven Spielberg was there to introduce the event, noting that he came unprepared on purpose, just as he was during the original shoot.

"I decided to risk it again and not come prepared with any remarks today," he told the crowd. "I'm empty-handed, except with a collection of memories stimulated just in the last hour and a half by walking through the exhibition they've so ingeniously assembled."

Amy Homma, the museum's director and president, said deciding on which films to celebrate with their own exhibits can be tricky.

"We're always thinking of the balance," Homma says. "What will attract cinephiles and die-hard film fans, and what will attract tourists who may not know a lot about film history. It's never an 'either/or' — it always has to be an 'and.'"