SF State alumna Stacey Wisnia, 32, has channeled her love of film into a full-fledged career.

Wisnia, who graduated with a degree in cinema from SF State in 1997, is the festival director for the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, where she co-selects each film that will be showcased in the three day event in July. There will also be a mini-festival taking place at the Castro Theatre Dec. 2.

Alongside the Silent Film Festival, Wisnia is also works for the San Francisco Indie Festival, where she is also a programer, selecting the films for the 12-day event held every February. Wisnia said in silent films, where there is no dialogue between characters, much is left to the imagination.

“I love being transported to another era, seeing how the actors dressed, and the live music," Wisnia said. She added many would be surprised to see how similar and contemporary the silent film era really was in terms of the comedic, dramatic and romantic aspects of the films.

Wisnia’s work with the festival includes selecting films that will engage her audience and draw people to attend the event. In order to do that, she must incorporate films that star big Hollywood names.

"We try to show film rarities as well as films with recognizable names so people will come," Wisnia said. She said the festival selects films with actors such as Charlie Chaplin and Fay Wray, who were part of the silent film era.

Part of Wisnia’s job also includes attending the Pordenone Film Festival in Sacile, Italy, where she selects films to be shown in San Francisco. She said the festival is a wonderful place for her to network with other film “geeks” including film archivists, preservationists and film historians.

While attending the event last year, she developed the idea to put together a film preservation panel for the July 2006 Silent Film Festival to show audiences the preservation process films must go through to become the final prints audiences see.

The event had more than 700 attendees this year and was organized by Wisnia and other film archivists. Sam Green, a documentary filmmaker and longtime friend of Wisnia, said he has always been inspired by her dedication to film and her strong work ethic.

"She really sees that film is not necessarily a static art," Green said. He added that Wisnia knows a "whole lot" about different genres of film, not just silent films.

Wisnia recalled the first film that inspired her to study cinema when she was a young college student. Maya Deren’s “Meshes of the Afternoon,” an experimental film she saw in class at Bard College in upstate New York, guided her to redirect her academic focus from liberal studies to a cinema. She spent two years at Bard College before transferring to SF State as a cinema major in the fall, 2004.

“Deren’s film helped open my eyes to the possibilities of film as an art form. There is no dialogue and I was impressed with the editing and the surrealism of the film,” Wisnia said. She added that it was the first experimental film she had watched and she fell in love with the unique cinematic art form of her work.

Before obtaining the position with the Silent Film Festival, Wisnia spent five years managing the Castro Theatre. She managed a staff of 30 employees and also had the job of organizing a weeklong film series as a tribute to famed cinematographer James Wong Howe.

Anita Monga, the former program director of the Castro Theatre and current program director for the Film Noir Festival, recalled Wisnia’s passion and enthusiasm for film when putting together the series.

“It was her willingness to immerse herself in the art of film that really impressed me,” Monga said. She added that Wisnia knew how to put together a series that was interesting and viable for a large audience.

Wisnia said that although she enjoys her job as programer, her career in film does not end there. She said she would like to go back to school to obtain her master’s degree and hopes to make a career out of film preservation and archiving.

Wisnia grew up in Lake Tahoe, and said the only films she was exposed to as a teenager were the big blockbuster, extravaganza films. She said Lake Tahoe was limited in terms of more artistic films that came through the quiet Northern California mountain community.

Before graduating from the cinema department, Wisnia said she went on to do an internship for San Francisco Cinematheque while still attending college. It was there that she said she got an inside look into the film industry and was introduced to many people within the field. She organized film archives and wrote the program notes for the non-profit organization that specializes in digital cinema and new trends within the industry.

Ann McGuire, a long time friend of Wisnia and former co-worker at Castro theatre said she is happy to sing her praises.

"Stacey made menial, meaningful and she knows a lot about film," McGuire said with regards to her experience working with Wisnia. She added that they share a love of film especially those from the 1920s and 1930s genre.

Wisnia is currently working on picking films to be entered in to the Indie Festival and has already started work on the upcoming years Silent Film Festival.