Ben Model’s blog

  • Looks like a deleted scene from Playtime, doesn’t it? I’m sitting in the Bauhaus lounge at MoMA. I’m early for my show today, and enjoying the free wifi at MoMA. Have been too danged busy to reflect and post here, but I know people read this blog, so I’ll jot…

  • Are you on Facebook? Please help support The Silent Clowns Film Series by voting for it (a/k/a Silent Cinema Presentations, Inc., our not-for-profit corp identity) on the Chase Community Giving page on FB. Click here and type in Silent Cinema Presentations, Inc. in the ‘search for your charity’ field:

  • I’ve just received my “marching orders” for the Whitney’s Alice Guy retrospective, Alice Guy Blaché: Cinema Pioneer. Below are the dates and film titles I’ll be accompanying. There will be other screenings dates, times and films, but I do not know what they are. There will be piano accompaniment for…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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,…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…