Wed 9/6 @ 7:30PM
Thu 9/7 @ 7:30PM
Fri 9/8 @ 7PM
Sat 9/9 @ 7:30PM
When “talkies” took over the movie world in the late 1920s and early 30s, silent films gradually came to seem like an anachronism and many of their creative ideas felt corny. But there was so much artistry involved in presenting a story within the limitations of the era.
Bask in that artistry this weekend when the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cleveland Silent Film Festival and Colloquium and the Cleveland Institute of Art’s Cinematheque resent the four-day Silent Film Festival at three different venues.
On Wednesday September 6 at the Cleveland Masonic Auditorium, it will screen Safety Last, a 1923 romantic comedy featuring Harold Lloyd. It’s the one with the scene of Lloyd hanging on to the hand of a large clock as he hangs high above a city street.
On Thursday, the CIA Cinematheque will show the 1920 film, The Mark of Zorro, starring one of the silent era’s greatest romantic heroes, Douglas Fairbanks Sr, as the swashbuckling masked hero. Live music will accompany the screening, provided by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, a Colorado quintet whose specialty is playing music for silent films.
The Cleveland Museum of Art will host Friday’s program, with two films: The Heart of Cleveland (1924) and Man with a Movie Camera (1929), again with the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra providing the music. The former film, made for the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company, is basically an educational film set in a storyline about a pilot taking pair of farm children to the big city — Cleveland — to learn about the wonders of electricity. Kevin Hagley from the Delaware organization that digitized and archived the film. The latter is a Soviet documentary, featuring groundbreaking avant-garde techniques to laud the benefits of the Soviet system.
The Festival concludes on Saturday at the Cinematheque with the anti-war film All Quiet on the Western Front from 1930, once again accompanied by the Mont Alto Orchestra. They’ll be augmented by live sound effects from Cleveland’s Radio on the Lake Theatre.
Get more information and tickets here.
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106
Cleveland, OH 44106
Cleveland, OH 44115