Events
Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman (1925)
Harold Lloyd is at his pluckiest and funniest in THE FRESHMAN, one of the most beloved of his comedies. His bespectacled character enters college seeking social and athletic recognition and turns campus upside down!
Don't miss this charming classic film, shown with an original live score performed by pianist David Blazer, in the Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium of the downtown Cleveland Public Library! FREE!! Saturday, June 21, 2025, Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium, Cleveland Public Library, 525 Superior Ave, Cleveland, OH 44114, 5:00 PM. Free admission.
Parking: Huntington Building Garage, 777 Rockwell and ABM Rockwell Garage are the nearest parking garages. Please note that street parking is free on the weekends!
His People (1925)
The Cleveland Silent Film Festival is proud to present HIS PEOPLE (1925), Edward Sloman's sensitive portrayal of the immigrant experience and the generational tensions around cultural assimilation. The film follows an Eastern European Jewish family in New York and the fraught relationship between a traditional father and his two ambitious sons.
Performed with a live original score compiled and performed by Alexander Fedoriouk, cimbalom, Steven Greenman, violin, and Catalin Petrescu, double bass.
FREE!! Saturday, April 5, 2025, Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium, Cleveland Public Library, 525 Superior Ave, Cleveland, OH 44114, 4:30 PM. Free admission.
Parking: Huntington Building Garage, 777 Rockwell and ABM Rockwell Garage are the nearest parking garages. Please note that street parking is free on the weekends!
War Story (2001) & Sunnyside (1919)
Join us for a silent double bill!
First we are showing Lorain filmmaker John Baumgartner's heartwarming WAR STORY (2001) about a romance between a waiter and an American soldier during World War I followed by Charlie Chaplin's beloved short SUNNYSIDE (1919). Both films will be shown with a live original score performed by Mike Petrone, longtime celebrated pianist at Johnny's Bar on Fulton. FREE!! Saturday, April 5, 2025, Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium, Cleveland Public Library, 525 Superior Ave, Cleveland, OH 44114, 4:30 PM. Free admission.
Parking: Huntington Building Garage, 777 Rockwell and ABM Rockwell Garage are the nearest parking garages. Please note that street parking is free on the weekends!
Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)
As part of our Silent Film Series, the Cleveland Silent Film Festival & Colloquium will be showing the classic Buster Keaton film Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) at the West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, accompanied by David Blazer on the organ.
The Cleveland Silent Film Festival and Colloquium is a celebration of the expressive power of early cinema when accompanied by live music. West Shore showcases the best films of the silent era combined with the creative talents of David Blazer, Director of Music.
For more information on the event, please visit the West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church website.
Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929)
Join the Cleveland Silent Film Festival & Colloquium along with The Cleveland Photoplayers, Eric Charnofsky, Director, at the Louis Stokes Wing of the Cleveland Public Library for a showing of Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail (1929).
Her Sister From Paris (1925)
Join the Cleveland Silent Film Festival & Colloquium at the Louis Stokes Wing of the Cleveland Public Library for a showing of Her Sister From Paris (1925), starring Constance Talmadge and Ronald Colman.
Accompanying will be David Blazer on the piano.
The Circus (1928)
The Cleveland Silent Film Festival & Colloquium with West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church in Rocky River present Charlie Chaplin's delightful comedy THE CIRCUS (1928), the hilarious and tender story of a tramp turned accidental comic in a traveling circus, who intervenes to rescue the beautiful bareback rider (Merna Kennedy) from a life of abuse. Come experience this classic film with a colorful and evocative original organ score performed live by David Blazer.
Cost: FREE
Learn more about the event: https://wsuuc.org/silent-film-series/
Holiday Silent Comedy Shorts Family Matinee
Join us for an afternoon of family fun!
Bring the kids for a pre-holiday family matinee of comedy shorts at Cleveland Heights’s Heights Theater. Dr. Philip Carli, pianist at the George Eastman Museum, who wowed us on Silent Movie Day, will be on hand again to perform for the event.
We’ll have holiday-themed shorts such as Laurel & Hardy’s Big Business as well as perennial favorites like Buster Keaton’s One Week. Join us for an old-fashioned selection of classic comedy guaranteed to appeal to all ages!
Tickets are currently available for $12.00 general admission, $9.00 for members; children under 12 are free.
Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life (1925)
Coming to the Cinematheque November 23, 2024 at 7 p.m.
Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life (1925) is a documentary film that follows a branch of the Bakhtiari tribe of Lurs in Persia as they and their herds make their seasonal journey to better pastures, and is considered one of the earliest ethnographic documentary films.
With original score composed and performed by Mahtab Nadalian, santour. A graduate of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran, since 2014 Nadalian has performed in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, and Pittsburgh.
Join us at the Cinematheque for what promises to be an unforgettable evening. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit their website.
Silent Movie Day at the Cinematheque
Join the Cleveland Silent Film Festival & Colloquium and the Cleveland Cinematheque in a celebration of Silent Movie Day!
On Sunday, September 29, the Cinematheque will present the Douglas Fairbanks classic The Thief of Baghdad. Freely adapted from “One Thousand and One Nights,” the film tells the story of a thief falling in love with the Caliph of Bagdad’s daughter, who promises him the princess on the condition that he brings back the rarest treasure of the seven moons. The epic fantasy-adventure impressed audiences with its spectacular production design and imaginative special effects, and is considered to be one of the greatest silent films and the favorite of its starring actor, Douglas Fairbanks
For ticket information and to purchase online, visit the Cinematheque.
Silent Movie Day at the Cinematheque
Join the Cleveland Silent Film Festival & Colloquium and the Cleveland Cinematheque in a celebration of Silent Movie Day!
On Sunday, September 29, the Cinematheque will present Ernst Lubitsch’s Carmen. This early Lubitsch adaptation casts the silent film tragedienne Pola Negri as the spell-binding, wonderfully wicked Carmen – a collaboration that transformed Negri into a silver screen goddess. The film retells Prosper Merimée’s classic tale of a Romani woman who seduces a military officer and sends each of them on a trajectory of dramatic self-destruction.
For ticket information and to purchase online, visit the Cinematheque.
The Many Moods of Melodrama: Sentiment, Satire, Horror, and Noir
Les Vampires, 1915
Join us for a captivating evening of short silent films exploring the melodramatic mode, with original scores performed by students from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
Five separate titles from France and the United States offer different takes on melodrama, from the traditional to the avant-garde. The program includes Mary Pickford in a new restoration of An Arcadian Maid (1910), the historical drama The Assassination of the Duke of Guise (1908) featuring an original score by Camille Saint-Saëns, the 1928 film adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” episode 2 of the French protonoir crime serial Les Vampires (1915), and Charlie Chaplin in the Keystone Studios comedy The Face on the Barroom Floor (1914).
For more information, visit: https://www.clevelandart.org/events/many-moods-melodrama-sentiment-satire-horror-and-noir
Video Clips
View video clips from the event:
2023 Festival
The 2023 festival opened in the grand historic Masonic Auditorium in Cleveland’s Midtown with a 100th anniversary celebration of Harold Lloyd’s nailbiter comedy Safety Last! on Wednesday, September 6th. Renowned silent film musician Clark Wilson, artist-in-residence at Columbus’s Ohio Theater, gave the audience a treat beforehand by explaining his scoring methods and talking about the Masonic’s Mighty Wurlitzer Opus 793, the featured instrument of the evening.
The festival continued at Cleveland’s Cinematheque on Thursday, September 7th, with Douglas Fairbanks in the rollicking Mark of Zorro (1920), accompanied by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.
The Mont Altos again provided original scores for the double bill at the Cleveland Museum of Art: “Birth of the Modern Industrial City” on Friday, September 8th. The program included two contrasting visions of modern industrial urbanism: The Heart of Cleveland (1924), a valentine to the old Lakeshore Power Plant and the modern conveniences it powered, and Man with a Movie Camera (1929), Dziga Vertov and Mikhail Kaufman’s mesmerizing tour of Soviet urban life.
For the festival’s closing night event on Saturday, September 9th, the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra provided the music for a moving production of All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) that included live sound effects performed by Cleveland’s own Radio on the Lake Theatre.
2023 Festival Program
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The festival kicks off with one of Harold Lloyd’s best-loved comedies—the iconic Safety Last! This screening features theater organist Clark Wilson, one of the most prominent and recognized scorers of silent photoplays in America today. Wilson’s musical accompaniments reflect the techniques and materials of the musical performances given in major picture palaces during the heyday of silent film. Tickets available here!
Source: https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/05005F0F816C1280
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Colorado’s Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra is America’s foremost ensemble dedicated to providing musical accompaniment for silent movies. The five-member band returns to Cleveland to play for three programs in the 2023 Cleveland Silent Film Festival. The first of these is The Mark of Zorro, a Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. comedy/adventure/romance in which the celebrated actor and acrobat plays the mysterious masked man (and populist hero) who undermines Spanish authorities in old California. Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide calls it “Doug’s best film—his first swashbuckler. Nonstop fun.” Digital. 108 min. For tickets visit Cinematheque’s website.
Special admission $18; members, CIA/CSU I.D. holders, age 25 & under $15. No Cinematheque passes.
Source: https://www.cia.edu/cinematheque/film-schedule/2023/09/the-mark-of-zorro
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Join us at the Cleveland Museum of Art for two films about the birth of the modern industrial city. The Hart of Cleveland (1924) tells the tale of two rural Northeast Ohio children visiting Cleveland and marveling at the possibilities of electrification. Man with A Movie Camera (1929) follows, a kaleidoscopic tour of Soviet urban life. The film regularly ranks in the top films of all time and is one of the most radical and influential—and fun—avant-garde features ever made Both films will feature original scores performed by the incomparable Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. Tickets can be purchased at the museum box office and website. (Cinematheque and/or Festival members should use the discount code SILENTS.) Thanks to Gabe Pollack, CMA.
Source: http://www.clevelandart.org/events/music-and-performances/cleveland-silent-film-festival-birth-modern-industrial-city
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Tonight, the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra (see 9/7) accompanies the lesser known silent version of Lewis Milestone’s masterpiece. Mont Alto’s music will be supplemented by sound effects created live by Cleveland’s own Radio on the Lake Theatre. This screen adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s searing anti-war novel—in which German schoolboys’ heroic notions of war are dispelled by battlefield realities—is not to be missed. 35mm. 133 min. For tickets, visit Cinematheque’s website.
Special admission $20; members, CIA/CSU I.D. holders, age 25 & under $17. No Cinematheque passes. Film preserved by the Library of Congress.
Source: https://www.cia.edu/cinematheque/film-schedule/2023/09/all-quiet-on-the-western-front-silent-version
Closing Night
2022 Festival
The Inaugural Cleveland Silent Film Festival & Colloquium ws held February 13-20, 2022.
Past Events
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Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)
May 4, 2025
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Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929)
April 5, 2025
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Her Sister from Paris (1925)
March 15, 2025
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The Circus (1928)
February 9, 2025
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Holiday Silent Comedy Shorts Family Matinee
November 24, 2024
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Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life (1925)
November 23, 2024
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National Silent Movie Day 2024 I
September 29, 2024
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National Silent Movie Day 2024 II
September 29, 2024
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The Many Moods of Melodrama: Sentiment, Satire, Horror, and Noir
May 10, 2024
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2023 Festival
The 2023 festival included performances by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.
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2022 Festival
The first Cleveland Silent Film Festival.