NFPF Films at Re:Vision — Festival of Restoration and Rediscovery
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Jean Harlow is a flirtatious nightclub-goer in Weak But Willing (1929).
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The San Francisco Film Preserve has launched a new festival, Re:Vision — Festival of Restoration and Rediscovery. It unfolds from September 24 to 27 at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. Celebrating the achievements of archives and archivists across the world, Re:Vision will present an impressive array of films from 18 countries and almost as many genres and eras.
The NFPF will co-present three screenings at Re:Vision—each featuring a short NFPF film preceding a main feature. Witch (1973) screens on Friday, Sept. 25 (prior to The Outcasts). It was created by Karen Loveland, one of the most prolific, and unheralded, American women filmmakers of the 20th century. She served as a staff filmmaker at the Smithsonian Institution for over 55 years. Witch is a looping film, created for the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, as part of an experiment in outsourcing the services of the Smithsonian’s Exhibits Motion Picture Unit to other museums. The film was preserved by the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, through an NFPF grant.
Saturday, Sept. 27 brings the screening of Weak But Willing (prior to The Garden of Eden). This short sound comedy from 1929 was written by, and stars, Vaudeville dialect comedian Will King. The set-up involves a very hungry King continually missing his birthday dinner because of business and from being taken to a nightclub by his wife. The dialogue is peppered with Yiddish and ethnic jokes, and references to prohibition. At the nightclub King has a flirtatious conversation with a patron played by Jean Harlow, barely a year into her Hollywood career. Also featured are silent comedian Billy Bevan and veteran actress Dot Farley as King’s pestiferous wife. Weak But Willing was preserved through an NFPF grant by The San Francisco Film Preserve.
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Karen Loveland's Witch (1973) was intended to be projected onto a blank bust at the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic.
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Also screening on Sept. 27 (prior to 8 Girls in a Boat) is Tribune-American Dream Picture. Dating from sometime in the 1920s, this oneiric short was sponsored by the Oakland Tribune newspaper and Oakland's American Theatre. It was part of a series that dramatized dream scenarios submitted by the public. In this episode a couple misplaces their baby on an increasingly strange ferry ride across San Francisco Bay. Dream Picture was preserved by the Library of Congress and is part of the NFPF’s Online Field Guide to Sponsored Films.
These three films represent only a small amount of what Re:Vision has to offer—take a look at the line-up and see for yourself!