Kansas Silent Film Festival to host screening at Grace Cathedral in Topeka
TOPEKA (KSNT) - The Kansas Silent Film Festival (KSFF) will be showing four silent films with live music accompaniment at Grace Cathedral later this month.
Silent films are films with no synchronized recorded sound or dialogue that were made from 1894 to 1929. These films were often accompanied by pianists, organists or small orchestras who played from sheet music or improvised while the film was running.
The Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library, with the cooperation of KSFF, are bringing organist Marvin Faulwell and percussionist Bob Keckeisen to perform live music scores for movies from the early 1900s. Film historian Denise Morrison will also be introducing the films. The films that will be shown are:
- "The Pumpkin Race" (1908 - Gaumont).
- This film follows a cart full of pumpkins rolling down a street while the owner chase them through the city. It was made by one of the earliest producers in film history, Leon Gaumont.
- "Alice's Spooky Adventure" (1924 - Walt Disney).
- In this film, a young girl loses her ball inside a neighborhood haunted house. When she goes inside to retrieve it, she is sent into a cartoon world where she battles spirits in a ghost town.
- "The Merry Widower" (1926 - Hal Roach).
- This film is about a man attempting to win his wife back with a scheme involving a fortune teller and a trip to a graveyard. It was produced by early comedy studio, Hal Roach Studios, which would go on to produce films with popular comedians of the time like Charley Chase, James Finlayson and Lauren & Hardy.
- "The Bat" (1926 - Roland West).
- This film is the feature film of the evening. It follows a masked criminal mastermind, and the police's attempt to apprehend him. The crew that worked on the film would go on to work on flims like "Gone With The Wind (1939)" and "Citizen Kane (1940)."
The event starts at 7 p.m. on Oct. 24 and is free of charge. Grace Cathedral is located at 701 SW Eighth St. in Topeka.
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