University Class Screenings and “Audience Preservation” – part 2

I teach a silent film course at Wesleyan University’s College of Film and the Moving Image, which has been offering it to students since 2015. On the first day of my class, I go around the room and ask everyone for their name, why they’re taking the class, and whether they’ve had any experience seeing silent film with live accompaniment. For the past several years, I have found that almost everyone says their first experience with silent film and live music was in a Wesleyan film course they had taken previously, at a class screening I accompanied. Last Spring, one of my students answered by saying they’d always thought silent film was kind of boring, until I came to play at their class the previous semester, and that this completely changed their opinion of silent movies.

The second year my course (“Silent Storytelling”) was offered I was looking for ways to increase or at least bolster the number of students signing up for my class, and I took a page out of my own playbook (see my previous post). I knew that either of the two courses offered that are prerequisites to take mine were basic overview-of-cinema ones. It occurred to me that there would be at least one or two silent films shown in those classes at the beginning of the semester. I went to the department Chair, Scott Higgins, and proposed the idea of my coming in to accompany the silent film he would be showing. Scott thought this was a great idea, and we went for it that fall. I have been doing this ever since, usually bringing in my virtual Wurlitzer, and it’s definitely helped get students interested in enrolling in my class.

That’s now eleven years of classes of 120-150 first-years getting to see Street Angel (1928), The Docks of New York (1928) or Wings (1927) on a big screen, live-scored with the sound of the movie palace.

I knew this would work, as I’d been playing for a class session almost every year since the mid-2000s at the silent film course taught at NYU’s Cinema Studies. It was from my playing at this class, usually taught by Prof. Antonia Lant, that gradually led to my meeting younger fans years later who’d tell me the day I accompanied films for the course was one of their favorite class sessions.

Having the live accompaniment really makes a difference, and helps first-timers really get what silent film is.

Over the years I’ve also done presentations like this at universities like Montclair State, South Dakota State University, Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College, Boise State, Vassar, St. Francis College, Ursinus College, Simons Rock College, Pratt Institute, and Bard College. I can’t be everywhere – although I did live-stream into a film history class in Colorado during the pandemic – and if you teach a course on silent film I hope you’ll hire an accompanist in your area to play at one of your class sessions.

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