LEGENDARY FILMMAKER MARTIN SCORSESE, PITTSBURGH AND CINEMAS ACROSS COUNTRY, EMBRACE INNAUGURAL NATIONAL SILENT MOVIE DAY
Sept. 4, 2021 – In April of this year, Mt. Lebanon resident Chad Hunter announced a new project called National Silent Movie Day—an annual event celebrating silent film history and raising awareness about the race to preserve surviving silent films.
Since then, more than 30 theaters and institutions around the country have signed on to host their own events, including Film Forum in New York City, the National Museum of Asian Art in Washington DC, the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, the Berkeley Art Museum in Berkeley, CA, and the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles.
Writing on his Turner Classic Movies blog, legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese also took note, stating that “September 29th is the very first National Silent Movie Day, a great initiative launched by three dedicated film archivists and/or activists: Brandee B. Cox from the Academy Archive, Chad Hunter from Video Trust and the Pittsburgh Silent Film Society and Steven K. Hill from UCLA […] this is exactly the kind of activist spirit we need right now in the world of cinema.”
Turner Classic Movies will celebrate the day with an all-silent film line-up, showing 15 movie titles from 6:00am to midnight, including Trip to the Moon (1902) by film pioneer Georges Méliès; Within Our Gates (1920) by Oscar Micheaux, considered the first feature-length motion picture produced by a Black filmmaker; Rudolph Valentino in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921); Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman (1925); Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights (1931), and Buster Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr. (1924).
Locally in Pittsburgh, Hunter has partnered with Row House Cinema in Lawrenceville to present Alfred Hitchcock’s silent masterwork Blackmail (1929), with live piano accompaniment provided by musician Tom Roberts, former piano player for Leon Redbone and scorer of Martin Scorsese’s 2004 film The Aviator. Dr. Adam Hart, film scholar and author of Monstrous Forms, will provide a short introduction.
To find out more about National Silent Movie Day and see a full list of events, visit www.nationalsilentmovieday.org.
