Author: Ben Model

  • October wrap-up, and a look forward into Nov & Dec

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    Ben Model

    I’ve managed to post about every single one of my performances during October 2009. The calendar quarter of Oct-Nov-Dec finds me working full-time as an accompanist, with 18-22 shows each month. I decided at the beginning of October to try and chronicle all the shows, plus give Twitter updates, for those of you who read…

  • Oct 28: 2 Danish @ MoMA, Thanhouser in New Rochelle

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    Ben Model

    Back in the Bartos for a pair of Danish films at MoMA, The Student of Prague and The Mysterious X. Both films were shown in 16mm prints; Student turned out to be a Bob Lee / Essex Film Club print, and Mysterious was some very old 16mm (it seemed a little brown in hue) with…

  • Oct 27: “Nosferatu” in Huntington

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    Ben Model

    We ran a really nice, tinted 35mm print of Nosferatu at the Cinema Arts Centre for this show, and it looked great at 21 fps. What was nice was that the projector technician who’d engineered our ability to have 21 fps as an alternate speed was in the audience to see his handiwork in action…

  • Oct 26: Thanhouser at MoMA

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    Ben Model
    in

    Last April, Charles Silver, Steve Massa and I screened MoMA’s holdings of Thanhouser Films to select the titles for this program. As it turned out some of these wound up being on the latest Thanhouser DVD set, which I also scored for Ned Thanhouser. With the exception of one title, a dupey 16mm print, they…

  • Oct 25: Harold Lloyd in “Dr. Jack”

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    Ben Model

    Dr. Jack, along with Keaton’s The Haunted House, was our Halloween offering at the Silent Clowns series. I dressed for the occasion, donning my saddle shoes and straw boater. (BTW, best place to get your own saddle shoes is muffys.com — they make saddle shoes for all the Broadway shows and tours, and they’re reasonably…

  • profile on me in The Epoch Times

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    Ben Model

    Last Friday, I got an email from a reporter from the Epoch Times, asking me for an interview on silent films and silent film music. She had a short deadline and found my website online, and could she interview me on Skype because she was in Bulgaria. Sure. I have a Skype account, fired it…

  • Oct 21-22: a pair of Scandinavian films

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    Ben Model

    Oct 21 and 22 found me back at MoMA’s Bartos theater accompanying a pair of films from my one of my favorite corners of the planet, Scandinavia. Afgrunden and Ingeborg Holm were screened, both in 35mm prints. MoMA’s print of The Abyss is okay; there’s a bit of decomp, but it’s complete. The print of…

  • Oct 17 – “The General” in Lake Champlain area

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    Ben Model

    Oct 16 – Traveled to Essex, NY for a show (on 10/17) of “The General” (DVD projection of the new Kino disc). Could’ve flown to Burlington VT on JetBlue and taken a ferry across Lake Champlain but, let me tell ya folks, Amtrak is the only way to fly. Both the trip up and the…

  • Oct 14-15: D.W. Griffith Biographs @MoMA; press interview

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    Ben Model

    October 13 and 14 found me at MoMA playing for a program of Griffith Biograph shorts, as part of Charles Silver’s series. The Weds show was in Bartos, on the Modus digital, and the Thurs show was in Titus 2, on the Steinway. (The T2 instrument, BTW, was Blanchette Rockefeller’s piano and had been reconditioned…

  • Oct 11 – Silent Clowns: new digs, fun shorts

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    Ben Model

    Sunday Oct 11 was our maiden voyage at the Arclight Theatre. Our audience really loved the new, more intimate space and the films looked great in there. Piano is an old Somebody & Someone upright, which I’d tuned a week or two before and seems to have held. The action is a little loose and…