north american premiere of shoes, lois weber (1916)

The North American premiere for the newly restored Lois Weber feature Shoes (1916) will be presented on July 17 at the Castro Theater in San Francisco as part of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.  The film will be introduced by Shelley Stamp and accompanied by Dennis James.

Here, from the festival program, is a bit more about what makes this restoration so important:

“SHOES was released to the American public in June 1916 during the height of the social reform movement. Weber directed and released an astonishing 19 films that year, many of which were highly controversial and often subjected to cries for censorship. The only known surviving copy of SHOES was a heavily deteriorated nitrate print residing in the collection of EYE Film. In 2008 the institute undertook a three-year project to restore the feature and return it to the screen. The print film was digitally scanned combined with fragments from another source, and then digitally corrected to the extent possible. English titles were recreated based on translation from the Dutch titles and the original color tinting was recreated by matching the source material. The final result of this preservation effort is a new film negative that serves as a preservation element for the film, and of course a brand new 35mm allowing SHOES to be shared with the world.”

Print courtesy of EYE Film Instituut Nederland