The San Francisco Silent Film Festival is a film festival first held in 1996 and presented annually at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, California, United States. It is the largest silent film festival in the United States, although the largest silent film festival in the world remains the Giornate del cinema muto in Pordenone, northern Italy. The 25th annual festival was held May 5 to May 11, 2021 at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. History The 16th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival was held at the Castro Theatre July 14–17, 2011, featuring 18 programs of films and presentations, all with live accompaniment by the foremost silent film musicians in the world. The festival opened with the new restoration of Upstream (1927) directed by John Ford and brought back last year to the U.S. from the New Zealand Film Archive, where it was discovered. As part of a collaboration between the Silent Film Festival and the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Matti Bye Ensemble performed three original commissioned scores to Mauritz Stiller's The Blizzard, Herbert Ponting's The Great White Silence, and the Closing Night Film, Victor Sjöström's He Who Gets Slapped. The festival's Visiting Director was Alexander Payne. On July 14, 2011, the Silent Film Festival announced their presentation, in association with American Zoetrope, The Film Preserve, Photoplay Productions, and British Film Institute, of Abel Gance's Napoleon in March 2012 at the Paramount Theatre Oakland. The presentation features the U.S. premiere of the complete restoration by Kevin Brownlow and the U.S. premiere of Carl Davis' orchestral score, with Davis conducting members of the Oakland East Bay Symphony. The film's famous triptych sequences was shown in full Polyvision, with three simultaneous projectors and a 70-foot screen. Napoleon had not been screened theatrically in the U.S. with live orchestra for nearly 30 years. In 2006, the festival added a one-day "Winter Event". On February 14, 2009, the 4th Winter Event presented the rarely seen A Kiss From Mary Pickford (1927) along with three other silent feature films. The 6th Annual Winter Event on February 12, 2011 featured the Marcel L'Herbier film L'Argent and three short films by Charlie Chaplin: The Rink, The Adventurer, and The Pawn Shop. The Silent Film Festival includes a focus on film preservation. Each year the festival includes a free program titled "Amazing Tales From the Archives," during which film archivists screen and discuss rare