Silent Echoes of San Francisco | The Presidio

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and other silent-era stars sometimes traveled to the Bay Area to shoot, capturing historic settings and local life in the background of their movies. Using archival photographs, vintage maps, and then-and-now comparison photographs, author John Bengtson leads a multimedia tour across the lost-and-found neighborhoods of San Francisco and Northern California as they appear in early film.

John Bengtson is a business lawyer, author, and film historian whose books Silent Echoes, Silent Traces, and Silent Visions reveal the early Hollywood history hidden within the films of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd. Bengtson is a frequent speaker at events hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Turner Classic Movie Channel Festival, and the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, and has provided commentary for a dozen Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd DVD/Blu-ray releases. John serves on the board of directors of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

For tours, maps, and new location discoveries, visit John’s blog.

Presented in association with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

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