Robert Byrne

Robert Byrne is an award-winning film restorer specializing in early cinema and films of the silent era. Working with film archives and collections worldwide he has led restorations of more than twenty feature films and numerous short subjects. In 2018 the publication of his restored BEHIND THE DOOR (1919) was recognized as a 2018 Best Single DVD Release at the Il Cinema Ritrovato DVD Awards, and in August 2020 his restoration of FRAGMENT OF AN EMPIRE (1929) received the prestigious Peter von Bagh award in Bologna, Italy.

Rob has lectured at the Library of Congress, University College Cork, Queen’s University Belfast, The Reel Thing Symposium, and numerous AMIA and FIAF technical symposiums, and publishes regularly on the topics of motion picture restoration and preservation. He is published in the volume Films that Sell: Moving Pictures and Advertising, and is co-author of Discovering Lost Films of Georges Méliès in fin-de-siècle Flip Books (1896–1901).

Rob serves as President of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating the public about silent film as an art form and as a culturally valuable historical record.