PRESS RELEASE: The 2024 Pittsburgh Silent Film Festival Celebrates Nine Essential Centennial Films (1924-2024)

Written By Chad Hunter

August 26, 2024 - Pittsburgh, PA

After a successful inaugural launch in 2023, the second annual Pittsburgh Silent Film Festival is back in 2024 with a new theme: centennial films, or films marking their 100th anniversaries since being released to the public in 1924. The festival takes place September 29 to October 6, 2024.  Nine films will screen at seven venues around the Pittsburgh area, with musicians providing live accompaniment for each film. 

The festival coincides with the 4th annual Silent Movie Day, a world-wide celebration of silent film occurring each year on September 29. Silent Movie Day was co-founded in 2021 by Pittsburgh Silent Film Festival director Chad Hunter. Film director Martin Scorsese remarked on the effort: “This is exactly the kind of activist spirit we need right now in the world of cinema.”  

2024 Festival Partners & Schedule:

  • Sunday, Sept. 29 at 2:00pm - a 100th anniversary screening of the classic comedy Hot Water (dir. Fred C. Newmeyer, 1924) starring Harold Lloyd. With the Pittsburgh Area Theater Organ Society at Keystone Oaks High School, including live Wurlitzer theater organ accompaniment by Peter Krasinski.  See the only remaining theater organ in operation in Pittsburgh! Tickets HERE. 

  • Monday, Sept. 30 at 7:00pm - He Who Gets Slapped (dir. Victor Sjöström,1924) starring Lon Chaney, the “Man of 1,000 Faces,” with live music by Andrew Lasswell. Free screening at the Mt. Lebanon Public Library, co-presented by The Denis Theatre. No tickets required, limited seating.   

  • Tuesday, October 1 -  Waxworks (dir. Paul Leni, 1924), the grandaddy of all horror anthology films, screens with Jump Cut Theater at The Parkway Theater. Live DJ music by Zombo. Tickets HERE. 

  • Wednesday, October 2 - Michael (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1924), a film widely considered a landmark in gay silent cinema, with live piano accompaniment.  Co-presented by ReelQ at the Harris Theatre. Tickets soon HERE.  

  • Thursday, October 3 at 7:30pm - The Hands of Orlac (dir. Robert Wiene, 1924), starring the great Conrad Veidt (best known from his role as the somnambulist in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) at The Lindsay Theater, with live accompaniment by the Pittsburgh Composers Quartet. Tickets HERE.  

  • Friday, October 4 at 8:00pm - Strike (dir. Sergei Eisenstein, 1924/25), the influential Soviet propaganda film, on 16mm film with original live score by The Ill Fitting Party and Friends at The Glitterbox Theater. Co-presented by Pittsburgh Sound + Image. Tickets HERE.  

  • Saturday, October 5 at 2:00pm - Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life (dir. Merian C. Cooper, 1924/25) the ethnographic film about a nomadic tribe in Iran, with live music by Iranian santour player Mahtab Nadalian.  Presented at the Frick Pittsburgh in conjunction with their Treasured Ornament exhibition. Tickets HERE.  

  • Sunday, October 6 - celebrating Buster Keaton’s 129th birthday weekend, it’s The Navigator (dir. Buster Keaton, 1924) with live music by The Pittsburgh Film Orchestra, and Sherlock Jr. (dir. Buster Keaton, 1924) with live piano by Tom Roberts at the Harris Theater. Tickets soon HERE. 

The schedule and ticket links are available now at the Pittsburgh Silent Film Society website at www.pittsburghsilentfilmsociety.org. 

About the Pittsburgh Silent FIlm Society (PSFS)

Founded in 2013 by film archivist and programmer Chad Hunter, the Pittsburgh Silent Film Society helps foster and promote silent film programming with live musical accompaniment in Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania. Through a 2014 grant from the Sprout Fund, Hunter launched “Silents, Please,” a monthly film series pairing silent movies with a wide range of musicians, and has since presented dozens of silent films with live music in the region. The PSFS launched the Pittsburgh Silent Film Festival in 2023 and formally established the group as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization in August of 2024.  

About Silent Film

Motion picture film was first commercially produced in 1889, but the innovation of adding a synchronized soundtrack directly onto the film next to the picture did not occur until the early 1930s. This roughly 40-year period marks the silent film era. Films from the silent period were printed on flammable nitrocellulose film stock, and rather than risk deadly fires, theaters and studios often destroyed or reclaimed silver content from prints after their theatrical runs were completed. Because of this destructive practice, 75% of all silent films made during the silent era are now considered lost forever. However, thousands of silent films still survive, and archives across the world work to preserve and restore those that remain. A handful of film festivals and societies present them to the public as they become newly available again. The San Francisco Silent Film Festival, which started in 1996, has since become the largest annual silent film festival in the U.S. Other festivals take place in Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, and Kansas, and internationally in Canada, England and Italy. Pittsburgh, which holds a significant place in silent film exhibition history, joined the list with its first silent film festival in 2023.  

Pittsburgh Silent Film History

Most Pittsburghers do not realize the city’s important historical place in cinema history:  Pittsburgh is the birthplace of the silent movie theater! In 1897, working with his father’s company Harris Comedy and Specialty Co., John Harris showed Pittsburgh's first motion picture. In 1905 Harris and Harry Davis transformed a storefront on Smithfield Street in downtown Pittsburgh into The Nickelodeon, the world’s first theater dedicated solely to the exhibition of motion pictures. 

Pittsburgh was also the birthplace of many silent movie industry stars of the day, including Adolphe Menjou, Olive Thomas, Thomas Meighan, William Powell, Maurice and Dolores Costello, Lillian Russell, David O. Selznick and Lois Weber. The festival will celebrate many of these figures and others in future programs.  

About PSFS Director Chad Hunter 

Hunter was mentored by Italian 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, one of the “Big Five” film archives in the U.S. 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 extant 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. His work in Pittsburgh includes leading both the historic Hollywood Theater in Dormont and The Rangos Giant Cinema at Carnegie Science Center through transitions from film to digital projection.  

Links

Trailer & Poster

Contact

Please contact Chad Hunter with any questions at pittsburghsilentfilmsociety@gmail.com


Chad Hunter
Next

Winter 2024 Newsletter