Chad Hunter was mentored by film preservationist Paolo Cherchi Usai, a founder of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, and now Director of the Cineteca del Friuli in Italy. From 1998 to 2005, Hunter served under Cherchi Usai as a film archivist and Preservation Officer in the Motion Picture Department at George Eastman Museum (GEM) in Rochester, New York. At GEM Hunter rediscovered and preserved two silent films in the 28mm collection that were previously thought "lost”: Harold Lloyd's Lonesome Luke’s Lively Life (1917), and director Raoul Walsh's earliest extent work, Mystery of the Hindu Image (1914). He supervised the preservation of more than one hundred films, and curated his first silent program “Pioneers of Animation” in 2004 at GEM’s Dryden Theatre.
Hunter served as Executive Director for the historic Hollywood Theater in Dormont from 2012 to 2016. He led the organization through the transition to DCI-compliant projection, added 35mm archival projectors to the booth, installed the only organ at a cinema in Pittsburgh, and launched “Silents, Please,” a monthly silent film series with live musical accompaniment. From 2017 to 2020 Hunter was Senior Director of The Rangos Giant Cinema at Carnegie Science Center, where he led the transition from 70mm to 4K digital projection. His programming at The Rangos included a 100th anniversary (to the day) 4K restoration screening of The Cabinet of Caligari.
In 2021 Hunter helped launch Silent Movie Day, an event taking place around the country and world to help celebrate silent films and the importance of film preservation. More information at www.nationalsilentmovieday.org.
He currently serves as a media archivist with the Appalshop Archive , working to salvage and preserve the largest collection of media related to central Appalachia - which was damaged by flooding in eastern Kentucky in 2022.