About
The Pittsburgh Silent Film Society (PSFS) was founded in 2013 to help foster and promote silent film exhibition with live musical accompaniment in Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania. Its mission includes advocating for celluloid film exhibition and preservation, and to serve communities in western Pennsylvania as a resource for information on how to properly care for celluloid films of all kinds, both silent and sound.
In 2014 PSFS founder Chad Hunter obtained a grant from the Sprout Fund to launch “Silents, Please,” a monthly silent film series at the Hollywood Theater in Dormont. With the frequent help of early jazz musician and scholar Tom Roberts, he has since programmed and presented over 50 silent films paired with 14 musical performers in western PA.
PSFS launched the Pittsburgh Silent Film Festival in 2023, partnering with 8 venues to show 9 films. The 2024 festival is scheduled for September 29 through October 6, 2024. The Society received its 501(c)3 charitable status in 2024.
Director
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.
Advisors
Tom Roberts is one of the leading exponents of early jazz piano in the world today. He has performed on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson The Statler Brothers Show on TNN , and A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Kiellor.
Tom arranged and performed the music for the soundtrack of Martin Scorsese’s film The Aviator, starring Leonardo di Caprio, as well as several titles for the film DeLovely.
He has also arranged music for the syndicated PRI show Riverwalk Jazz, Live from the Landing with the Jim Cullum Jazz Band, and a number of pieces for Wynton Marsalis and The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra for a concert of the music of Louis Armstrong in October 2006. He was the featured pianist at the International Stride Piano Summit in Zurich, Switzerland 2001 and 2009. Tom was pianist for Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks in New York City and pianist and musical director for Leon Redbone for six years.
Originally from Pittsburgh, Tom played in all the major jazz clubs in the French Quarter and on the riverboats of New Orleans when he lived there from 1989 to 1994. Tom has performed twice at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 2003, once with Skitch Henderson and the New York Pops. He was featured in 2003 in solo with Dick Hyman at the prestigious Jazz In July series at New York’s 92nd St. Y.
Tom has recorded over 40 albums and has performed throughout the United States and Europe.