Pittsburgh Silent Film Festival to celebrate essential centennial films
The Pittsburgh Silent Film Festival will be celebrating nine essential films that are turning 100 this year when it gets underway Sunday, Sept. 29.
The nine movies will screen at seven different venues in the Pittsburgh area, with musicians providing live accompaniment for each film. This is the festival’s second year, and it coincides with the fourth annual Silent Movie Day on Sept. 29, which was co-founded in 2021 by Chad Hunter, a Mt. Lebanon resident and director of the Pittsburgh Silent Film Festival.
When interviewed last year about the festival, Hunter noted that even though films from the earliest days of cinema can now be readily viewed on streaming services, DVDs, YouTube and TCM, they were created with a theatrical audience in mind.
“That’s the way they were meant to be seen,” he said. “They were pieces of art meant to be shown theatrically on a big screen.”
The festival will start with a screening of the 1924 Harold Lloyd comedy, “Hot Water,” at Keystone Oaks High School in Dormont. It is being presented by the Pittsburgh Area Theatre Organ Society with organist Peter Krasinski playing a vintage Wurlitzer theater pipe organ. A hand-colored version of the 1902 classic silent short “A Trip to the Moon” will also be shown.
“A Trip to the Moon” and “Hot Water” will be screened at 2 p.m. on Sept. 29.
On Monday, Sept. 30, at 7 p.m., the Lon Chaney drama, “He Who Gets Slapped,” is set to be shown at Mt. Lebanon Public Library. No tickets are required, but seating is limited.
“Waxworks,” described as “the granddaddy of all horror anthology films,” will screen at the Parkway Theater in McKees Rocks at 7 p.m. Oct. 1. It will be accompanied by a live DJ.
A film widely considered a landmark in gay silent cinema, “Michael,” will be shown at the Harris Theater in downtown Pittsburgh with piano accompaniment on Wednesday, Oct. 2, at 7:30 p.m.
Conrad Veidt, who appeared in the silent classic “The Cabinet of Dr. Calgari” and later played a Nazi major in “Casablanca,” stars in “The Hands of Orlac,” scheduled to be screened at the Lindsay Theater in Sewickley on Thursday, Oct. 3, at 7:30 p.m. It will be accompanied by the Pittsburgh Composers Quartet.
The influential Soviet propaganda film, “Strike,” will screen at the Glitterbox Theater in Homestead on Friday, Oct. 4, at 8 p.m. A 16mm print will be used and it will be accompanied by the band Ill Fitting Party and Friends.
“Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life,” an ethnographic film about a nomadic tribe in Iran, will be shown at the Frick Pittsburgh Saturday, Oct. 5, at 2 p.m. It will be accompanied by live music from Iranian santoor player Mahtab Nadalian. It is being screened in conjunction with the exhibit “Treasured Ornament.”
The festival will wrap up with a Buster Keaton double feature at the Harris Theater. The Pittsburgh Film Orchestra will accompany “The Navigator,” and “Sherlock Jr.” will be shown with live piano by Tom Roberts. It is set for Sunday, Oct. 6, at 5 p.m.
Hunter was a film archivist at George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y., one of the most extensive film archives in the United States. While there, Hunter rediscovered and preserved two silent films that many believed had been lost: the Harold Lloyd comedy, “Lonesome Luke’s Lively Life”; and “Mystery of the Hindu Image,” the earliest existing work from director Raoul Walsh.
In Pittsburgh, Hunter led the Hollywood Theater in Dormont and the Rangos Giant Cinema at the Carnegie Science Center through transitions from film to digital projection. Hunter also leads the Pittsburgh Silent Film Society.
Ticket links and additional information on the Pittsburgh Silent Film Festival can be found at www.pittsburghsilentfilmsociety.org.