Events
Blood and Sand (1922)
Rudolph Valentino’s career was on the rise when he was cast as the lead in this adaptation of Vicente Blasco Ibañez’s novel Blood and Sand. A critical and commercial success, Blood and Sand became one of the highest-grossing movies of 1922. (Just four years later, Valentino would be dead of a perforated ulcer, shocking the film community.) Valentino plays Juan Gallardo, a celebrated bullfighter torn between his love for Carmen, his childhood sweetheart (Lila Lee), and the seductive Doña Sol (Nita Naldi). Valentino and Naldi give some of the most memorable performances of their respective careers.
Live original score performed by Rob Kovacs, piano.
Metered street parking or nearest parking garages are Huntington Building Garage, 777 Rockwell and ABM Rockwell Garage.
The Louis Stokes Wing is accessible to people with disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). If you have further concerns or questions about accessibility at the Cleveland Public Library (CPL) or if you believe you need special accommodations at any of our locations or events please contact Chief Operations Officer John Lang (john.lang@cpl.org) at (216) 623-2851 or Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Ashley Boyd (ashley.boyd@cpl.org) at (216) 902-4926 to further assist you.
Silent Shorts!
The Cleveland Silent Film Festival makes its Heights Music Hop debut with an hour-long program of four silent comedy shorts, accompanied by pianist David Blazer’s original improvised scores. The program features two Buster Keaton classics, One Week (1920) and The Electric House (1922); Lotte Reiniger’s animated Cinderella (1922); and Alice Guy-Blaché’s fast-paced French comedy The Race for the Sausage (1907). Fun for all ages!
East and West (1923)
With live original music composed and performed by world-renowned klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals and celebrated silent film pianist Donald Sosin.
Early in her career, Yiddish theater star Molly Picon traveled to Vienna to make films. The earliest to survive is East and West , a blend of comedy, romance and cross-cultural collision. Picon plays an Americanized young Jewish woman whose independent outlook (and pugilistic interests) clash with the Old World traditions of her Eastern European relatives. Jacob Kalich (Picon’s real-life husband) co-stars as a shy yeshiva scholar, while Sidney M. Goldin appears as Molly’s tradition-minded father. This special presentation features a live original score performed by acclaimed team of pianist Donald Sosin and klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals. September 15, 2026, 7:30 pm, The Cinematheque at the Cleveland Institute of Art. $25/$20 Cinematheque and CSFF members.
For more information, visit https://cinematheque.cia.edu/movies/east-and-west/.
Three Bad Men (1926)
The Western and American film came of age together, joining forces in the work of Tom Mix, W. S. Hart, and Broncho Billy. No director defined the genre more fully than John Ford, whose Westerns include many from before the advent of sound. Three Bad Men (1926) is among Ford’s best: the story follows three outlaws who inadvertently rescue a young woman (Olive Borden), and become her unlikely protectors after her father is killed. George O’Brien co-stars as a young settler drawn into their struggle against a corrupt sheriff. Ford establishes conventions of the Western even as he upends them, setting them against a fundamentally alien landscape. Cleveland’s star pianist Jackie Warren (whose early career included accompanying melodramas in Colorado), will perform an original improvised score. September 16, 2026, 7:00 pm, the Cleveland Museum of Art. Noted John Ford expert Grafton Nunes will provide the film’s introduction at 6:30 pm. $25/$22 CMA, CSFF members.
The General (1926)
A critical failure on its original release, The General is now regarded as one of Buster Keaton’s greatest films. The story is based on actual events during the Civil War, in which Union soldiers commandeered a train called “The General.” In a now controversial decision, Keaton’s version has a Confederate protagonist because he reasoned that it would be harder for Southern audiences to root for the side that had won the war. The film’s narrative is structured around two elaborate locomotive chases that include some of Keaton’s most daring and famous stuntwork including, most famously, an actual train plummeting from a collapsing bridge into a gorge. This special showing at the Cleveland Grays Armory will feature a live score by theater organist Donnie Rankin, performing on the Armory’s historic Wurlitzer, originally housed at Erie’s Warner Theater. September 17, 2026, 7:30 pm, 1234 Bolivar Road. $25/$22 CSFF members.
The Johnstown Flood (1926)
In 1889 the South Fork Dam above Johnstown, Pennsylvania failed, killing 2,209 people in the deadliest flash flood in American History. Thirty-seven years later, director Irving Cummings dramatized the event in The Johnstown Flood. George O’Brien stars as Tom O’Day, a civil engineer concerned with the dam’s instability and the vulnerability of the workers living in the valley below. Janet Gaynor and Florence Gilbert, representing opposite sides of the social divide, are the two women who love him. The Johnstown Flood is noted for its innovative special effects in depicting the film’s disastrous events. Historian Robert A. Harris notes that “the importance of The Johnstown Flood to film history is difficult to overstate.” This screening includes a guest appearance by noted silent film musician Rodney Sauer, who leads a quintet in a score created expressly for the film. September 18, 2026, 7:30 pm, Gartner Auditorium, Cleveland Museum of Art. $25/$22 CMA, CSFF members.
A Page of Madness (1926)
Directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa in collaboration with artists of Japan’s experimental “School of New Perceptions,” A Page of Madness draws on German Expressionism, Noh theater, and melodrama. Rapid montage, superimposition, and distorted imagery immerse the viewer in the troubled inner world of its characters. Set in a psychiatric hospital the film follows a woman who has lost her mental bearings. Her guilt-ridden husband, now unknown to her, works at the asylum as a janitor. Long believed lost, the film resurfaced in Kinugasa’s warehouse in 1971. Although roughly a third of the original version remains missing, its beauty and disturbing psychological force are undiminished.
A 2018 BBC preview of the film described it as “a balletic musing on our subconscious nightmares.” The CSFF screening features an original score by James Praznik performed by a quintet drawn from NoExit New Music Ensemble.September 19, 2026, 2:30 pm, Gartner Auditorium, Cleveland Museum of Art. $25/$22 CMA and CSFF members.
Beau Geste (1926)
After reading P. C. Wren’s new novel Beau Geste, Irish American film director Herbert Brenon hurried to Jesse Lasky’s office at Paramount Pictures to pitch a film adaptation. Lasky gave Brenon free rein and resources to create a film that matches the novel’s epic scope. The story centers on the bond among three English brothers (played by Ronald Colman, Neil Hamilton, and Ralph Forbes) whose lives are disrupted by the disappearance of a precious family heirloom, leading them to the French Foreign Legion and the battlefields of North Africa. The film’s exteriors were shot on location in California’s Imperial Dunes, its vast white sands standing in for the Sahara. Silent film music specialist Rodney Sauer will lead a quintet in a newly compiled score created for the film, combining period music with live performance to heighten its romance, suspense, and grandeur. September 20, 2026, 2:30 pm, Gartner Auditorium, the Cleveland Museum of Art. $25/$22 CMA, CSFF members.
The Scarlet Letter (1926)
As part of Ohio-Goes-to-the-Movies and America-250, the Cleveland Silent Film Festival presents renowned director Victor Sjöström's emotional take on Hawthorne's famous novel, starring Ohio-native Lillian Gish. With original live compilation score by Eric Charnofsky performed by the Cleveland Photoplayers, and based on the original MGM cue sheet. Pre-film gathering at 2:00, with introductory remarks by film scholar Jonah Horwitz at 2:30, film at 3:00, and reception following with a talkback about the score and its creation by the musicians.
Original score performed live by the Cleveland Photoplayers, Eric Charnofsky, Director.
Parking info: There are numerous garages conveniently located close to the library, including Huntington Building Garage, 777 Rockwell, and ABM Rockwell Garage.
Want to help out with the event? Volunteer by signing up at https://dash.pointapp.org/admin/events/680827
For Heaven's Sake (1926)
Harold Lloyd scales new comic heights in For Heaven’s Sake (1926), a whirlwind romantic comedy packed with daring stunts, frantic misunderstandings, and the kind of breathless energy that made Lloyd one of silent cinema’s biggest stars. When a carefree millionaire unexpectedly finds purpose—and love—through a struggling mission in the city’s rougher neighborhoods, chaos and hilarity follow in equal measure. Fast-paced, charming, and wildly inventive, the film showcases Lloyd at his most irresistible.
Live piano score by David Blazer!
Parking info: There are numerous garages conveniently located close to the library, including Huntington Building Garage, 777 Rockwell, and ABM Rockwell Garage.
And don't forget that street parking is FREE on Saturdays! Recommended strategies include checking St. Clair Ave. between 12th and 9th if you can walk a few blocks.
Battling Butler (1926)
BATTLING BUTLER (1926) stars Buster Keaton as a pampered millionaire mistaken for a fearsome prizefighter. To impress his sweetheart, he assumes the boxer’s identity—with anxiety producing results. Blending deadpan comedy with inventive physical gags, the film is also a satire of masculinity and class, showcasing Keaton’s signature precision and understated charm in one of his most delightful silent comedies.
BATTLING BUTLER will be accompanied by a live organ score created and performed by David Blazer. FREE!!
Why Be Good? (1929)
Colleen Moore’s sparkling silent comedy Why Be Good? (1929) captures the Jazz Age at its most effervescent, pairing Moore’s irresistible charm with a knowing wit that playfully upends expectations of modern womanhood. A buoyant blend of romance and social satire, the film follows a shopgirl whose irrepressible spirit collides with class conventions – only to reveal a tender heart beneath the flapper bravado. Why Be Good? will be accompanied live by the Cleveland Photoplayers, under the direction of Eric Charnofsky. Cleveland Public Library — Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium. FREE!
Parking info: There are numerous garages conveniently located close to the library, including Huntington Building Garage, 777 Rockwell, and ABM Rockwell Garage.
And don't forget that street parking is FREE on Saturdays! Recommended strategies include checking St. Clair Ave. between 12th and 9th if you can walk a few blocks.
A May Tale
Karel Anton’s poetic silent film A May Tale (1926), adapted from Vilém Mrštík’s impressionistic novel, unfolds in ten lyrical movements tracing the intertwined fates of four sisters—Helenka, Gusta, Albína, and Anna—daughters of an aging forester. This landmark of Czech silent cinema, once fragmented, has been painstakingly restored with new intertitles presented in a new English translation by Czech Cultural Center President Paul Burik. A May Tale will be accompanied by a new score featuring Central European folk music and performed by members of Cleveland’s own Harmonia ensemble. Free, with a reception to follow!
Metropolis (1927)
Come see Fritz Lang’s audacious cinematic undertaking—the sci-fi classic Metropolis, starring Brigitte Helm as both Maria and the robot human—with a colorfully rich new score featuring David Blazer on organ and Andrew Pongracz on percussion. Inspired by the new modernist architecture of 1920s New York and the class divisions of the industrial age, Metropolis is a timeless statement about technological anxiety and what it means to be human. FREE!
So's Your Old Man (1926)
Gregory La Cava directs this comedy of errors, starring W.C. Fields as a hen-pecked, inebriated inventor who triumphantly creates unbreakable windshield glass while struggling to gain the respect of his social-climbing daughter and nagging wife. Director: Gregory La Cava. Run Time: 67 min. Format: 35mm Release Year: 1926. Starring: Alice Joyce, Charles "Buddy" Rogers, Kittens Reichert, Marcia Harris, W.C. Fields.
With an introduction by Dr. Harriet Fields, W.C. Fields's granddaughter about her grandfather's work. Complete with live score by Jeff Rapsis, piano!
For more information on W.C. Fields see www.wcfields.com.
General Admission: 14.00. 25 & under, CIA, CSU: 11.00. Purchase tickets.
Beverly of Graustark (1926)
Come join us for the comedy BEVERLY OF GRAUSTARK (1926) with a live operetta-style score by members of Harmonia Ensemble! Marion Davies plays an American heiress who disguises herself as her royal cousin to protect the kingdom of Graustark, leading to political mix-ups, adventure, and unexpected romance. Cleveland Public Library — Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium. FREE, with a reception to follow!
Parking info:There are numerous garages conveniently located close to the library, including Huntington Building Garage, 777 Rockwell, and ABM Rockwell Garage.
And don't forget that street parking is FREE on Saturdays! Recommended strategies include checking St. Clair Ave. between 12th and 9th if you can walk a few blocks.
The Cameraman (1928)
Buster Keaton is THE CAMERAMAN in this 1928 comedy, presented with a live score compiled from historic photoplay music. Performed by the Cleveland Photoplayers (Emily Cornelius, Amitai Vardi, Larry Herman, David Ellis, directed by Eric Charnofsky). Free, with a reception to follow!
Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)
The Cleveland Silent Film Festival comes to Lakewood! Join us in the multipurpose room of the main Lakewood Public Library for one of Buster's most daring, hilarious, and touching comedies about a son who must rescue both his father and future father-in-law from a) prison and b) a raging storm/flood. David Blazer brings it all to life with an original live piano score. Free!!
Paths to Paradise (1925)
For our November monthly series we'll be showing the comedy caper PATHS TO PARADISE with Raymond Griffith and Betty Compson, featuring a live score by the Dan Bruce Trio. Join us in the Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium at the downtown Cleveland Public Library! Free, with reception to follow!
The Monster (1925)
Join us for the centennial of the campy horror-comedy THE MONSTER, starring Lon Chaney, Sr., and directed by Cleveland's own Roland West. Will the young couple escape the terrors of the Old Dark House? FREE!
2025 Silent Film Festival
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On September 14, the Cleveland Silent Film Festival and Colloquium marks the centennial of a landmark in cinema history: The Phantom of the Opera (1925). This special screening features the film accompanied by its original score, performed live by American Musical Productions’ 18-piece orchestra under the baton of conductor Joseph Rubin.
Lon Chaney’s performance as the phantom still captivates a century later, while the music of the original 1925 orchestral score brings the gothic grandeur of Gaston Leroux’s tale to life.
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Step into a world of high society and hidden secrets as the Cleveland Silent Film Festival and Colloquium presents Ernst Lubitsch’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925), an imaginative silent adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s sharp-tongued comedy of manners.
This silent-era gem is accompanied by a chamber quintet performing live, bringing the film to life with a rich, evocative original compilation score drawn from authentic historic photoplay music. It’s an evening where elegance, irony, and artistry take center stage.
Don’t miss this rare chance to experience one of silent cinema’s most sophisticated comedies as it was meant to be seen and heard: on the big screen, with live music and all the charm of a bygone era.
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Presented in conjunction with the CMA’s exhibition Rose Iron Works and Art Deco and in celebration of the centenary of the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, the moment that birthed the bold elegance of Art Deco, the Cleveland Silent Film Festival and Colloquium presents two avant-garde masterpieces by visionary filmmaker René Clair, brought thrillingly to life with live music performed by Philip Carli and Eric Charnofsky.
First, drift through a dreamlike Paris suspended in time in Paris Qui Dort (1925), Clair’s poetic sci-fi comedy, accompanied by the vibrant compilation score first heard at the film’s Parisian premiere. Then, lose yourself in the surreal spectacle of Entr’acte (1924), Clair’s riotous Dadaist short, performed with a piano four-hands version of Erik Satie’s playful, groundbreaking score just as it was originally experienced.
These two landmark films echo the spirit of experimentation and aesthetic innovation that defined the Art Deco movement and continue to inspire a century later. Don’t miss this mesmerizing afternoon that combines cinema, music, and design in a celebration of timeless modernity.
The event is preceded by a panel discussion—moderated by pianist Eric Charnofsky (Cleveland, OH)—on silent film music by some of the best local and regional practitioners of the art: Philip Carli (Rochester, NY), Rodney Sauer (Louisville, CO), David Blazer (Cleveland, OH), and Donnie Rankin (Ravenna, OH).
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The 2025 Cleveland Silent Film Festival and Colloquium continues with Buster Keaton’s classic comedy Go West, which also celebrates its 100th year. The film is being presented with a compilation chamber score by Rodney Sauer, who leads our Cleveland-based ensemble. The score is enhanced with sound effects provided by Radio on the Lake Theatre.
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A partnership with the Cleveland Cinematheque.
God and Satan war over earth; to settle things, they wager on the soul of Faust, a learned and prayerful alchemist.
Experience Murnau’s 1926 silent fantasy horror masterpiece Faust like never before, reimagined with a blistering live metal score by The Silent Light. A cinematic ritual of chaos and sound.
Band Bio:
The Silent Light is a live film scoring project that performs original heavy metal soundtracks to classic silent films. Founded by composer and director Michael Formanski, the group reimagines iconic works like Metropolis, Faust, and A Page of Madness through immersive live performances that blend black metal, doom, and ambient soundscapes. The result is a visceral, cinematic experience that brings new intensity and emotional weight to century-old visuals.
Performances feature a powerful ensemble typically featuring guitar, drums, and synthesizers playing in sync with the film. The Silent Light has built a growing following among fans of experimental film, underground metal, and dark fantasy, and their shows consistently draw passionate, attentive audiences.
War Story (2001) & Sunnyside (1919)
Join us for a silent double bill!
First we are showing Charlie Chaplin’s beloved short SUNNYSIDE (1919) followed by Lorain filmmaker John Baumgartner's heartwarming WAR STORY (2001) about a romance between a waiter and an American soldier during World War I. 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, August 9, 2025, Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium, Cleveland Public Library, 525 Superior Ave, Cleveland, OH 44114, 3:00 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, July 12, 2025, Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium, Cleveland Public Library, 525 Superior Ave, Cleveland, OH 44114, 3:00 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!
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!
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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July 11, 2026
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June 13, 2026
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April 19, 2026
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April 11, 2026
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February 22, 2026
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January 18, 2026
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January 10, 2025
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December 13, 2025
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December 7, 2025
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November 8, 2025
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October 26, 2025
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September 14 - September 27, 2025
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August 9, 2025
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July 12, 2025
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June 21, 2025
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May 4, 2025
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April 5, 2025
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March 15, 2025
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February 9, 2025
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November 24, 2024
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November 23, 2024
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September 29, 2024
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September 29, 2024
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May 10, 2024
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The 2023 festival included performances by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.
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The first Cleveland Silent Film Festival.