Pittsburgh Silent Film Festival highlights underseen works from early Hollywood

Everyone, from writers to high-powered studio executives, has been trying to answer the question: How do we bring people back to the movies? The answer has often turned to going bigger and grander, with special effects and superheroes being thrown at the audience from every direction.

But maybe we were missing the most obvious answer of all — bring century-old silent films back to the big screen. The sample size might be minuscule, but in Pittsburgh, it just might work.

Chad Hunter, director of the Pittsburgh Silent Film Society, says local screenings of silent films have been rousing successes.

“We’ve done about two to three silent film screenings in Pittsburgh each year, and they sell out,” Hunter tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “So we know, there is an audience out there that is interested in silent film in Pittsburgh."

This gave Hunter and the PSFS the confidence to launch the first-ever Pittsburgh Silent Film Festival, a week-long event showcasing nine films at eight different venues across the city. Taking place Sun., Sept. 24-Oct. 1, the festival coincides with Silent Movie Day, an annual event — happening this year on Fri., Sept. 29 — described as a worldwide celebration of silent film.

Hunter drew on his background as an archivist and the city’s interest in film to put together programming that offers more than just images on a screen. The festival kicks off with a 100th-anniversary screening of Buster Keaton’s 1923 film Our Hospitality at Keystone Oaks High School. Presented in partnership with the Pittsburgh Area Theater Organ Society, the screening will include live Wurlitzer theater organ accompaniment by Jay Spencer.

Also celebrating 100 years is Safety Last starring Harold Lloyd, which will screen at the Mt. Lebanon Public Library during an event presented by The Denis Theatre.

The Lindsay Theater in Sewickley will host a screening of the bizarre, brilliant, German Expressionist work The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, along with a short film and live accompaniment by the Pittsburgh Composers Quartet.

And that doesn’t even scratch the surface, with eight total events going on across the city, including a showing of the influential 1927 film Wings at Row House Cinema in Lawrenceville, and The Lodger, one of Alfred Hitchcock’s first films, being played at the Parkway Theater in McKees Rocks.
The festival serves to showcase the creativity and diversity of silent-era films, as well as support the artists and venues that make the Pittsburgh film scene possible.

“The pandemic hurt local venues”, Hunter says. “I didn’t initially intend for the festival to happen at so many different locations, but I really wanted to support our local venues and musicians, and this represents a chance to celebrate them and get people back out to them.”

Hunter explains that a lot of the programming came out of these collaborations, with venues bringing ideas to the table on films that would fit their mission.

“[The Frick Pittsburgh] has a Shakespeare exhibit going on right now, so they came to us and asked if there are any silent Shakespeare films," he says. "We told them there’s actually a series of early shorts of his work, which dovetail nicely with what they’re already doing.”

Silent Shakespeare: Four Early Short Films will play at The Frick Pittsburgh on Oct. 1 during an evening that includes live musical accompaniment by Tom Roberts.
Some of the featured films have particular relevance to the southwestern Pa. region. On Fri., Sept. 29, the Harris Theater will show The Johnstown Flood, a 1926 film by Irving Cummings that dramatizes the real-life events of the catastrophic 1889 flood in Johnstown. The event marks the Pittsburgh premiere of a newly restored version of the film, in a way acknowledging efforts to preserve a locally relevant movie nearly lost to history.

Bringing The Johnstown Flood to local audiences demonstrates the overall mission of the Pittsburgh Silent Film Festival. Silent film is an endangered species, wildly important cultural artifacts on the verge of extinction due to a number of factors ranging from deterioration to being outright discarded by studios. Studies by the Library of Congress and director Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation estimate that the vast majority of films made before 1929 are lost.

Many remaining silent films would not exist if not for the extreme care and passion of people like Hunter.

“Only 25% of silent films ever made still exist,” he said. “75% are lost, so what we have left are to be treasured. Some were junked, some were a fire hazard, some were just thought to not be worth preserving.”

Despite these losses, Pittsburghers will, over the course of a week, have a chance to see a lot of beautiful history on display.

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Pittsburgh Silent Film Festival. Sun., Sept. 24-Oct. 1. Multiple locations. Ticket prices vary. pittsburghsilentfilmsociety.org