Festival to Feature Rare Films

Cinecon 31, the Society for Cinephiles’ 31st annual festival of rare silents and talkies, will run Thursday-Monday at the Radisson Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. More than half the presentations will include appearances by those involved in making the films, including some of the stars.

Opening night will feature a program of film fragments that no longer exist in complete form, including trailers for “The Divine Woman” with Greta Garbo and “The American Venus” with Louise Brooks, and a panel discussion on film preservation. Screenings begin Thursday at 7 p.m. and will continue through Monday at 3 p.m. Film memorabilia will be on sale in a dealers’ room from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. Highlights of the festival include “Rosita” (1923), directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Mary Pickford; a newly restored print of “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” (1921), which made Rudolph Valentino a star; “The Trail of the Lonesome Pine” (1936), the first outdoor three-strip Technicolor film, with Henry Fonda, Sylvia Sidney and Fred MacMurray, with Sidney in attendance; “Reveille With Beverly” (1943), with Ann Miller, who will be present; “The Nth Commandment” (1923), a newly reconstructed print of the Frank Borzage film made especially for the convention by the Library of Congress; and “Fast Company,” a long-lost Our Gang silent short recently discovered in Australia and restored by the society. Information: (213) 386-6426.