Historic Warwick Blog: First Annual Orange County Silent Film Festival

Thursday, July 12, 2012

First Annual Orange County Silent Film Festival

Experience the beginnings of American film with selections of horror, mystery, fantasy, and animation. Discover Orange County’s own role in movie history and how Hollywood began by those who created it at the First Annual Orange County Silent Film Festival, at the A.W. Buckbee Center, 2 Colonial Avenue, Warwick, NY

Four sessions are scheduled beginning on Sunday, July 29, 1:00 – 3:00 pm & 4:00 – 6:00 pm and Monday, July 30, 12:00 – 2:00 pm & 7:00 – 9:00 pm. Admission is $10.00, $5.00 for children under 12. The festival is a cooperative presentation by The Neversink Valley Museum of History & Innovation, Seth Goldman, Executive Director; and Warwick Historical Society executive director Dr. Robert Schmick. Reservations are strongly suggested by contacting the NVM at (845)-754-8870 or WHS at (845) 986-3236 or 845-781-3729.

The Neversink Valley Museum and the Institute for Early Film Studies celebrates the contributions of such Hollywood legends as D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Mack Sennett, Florence Lawrence amongst others, who came to Orange County in the earlier part of the 19th Century to create films. Seth Goldman is the Executive Director of both the museum and institute, and Gretchen Weerheim is the museum educator and assistant director of the institute.

D.W. Griffith created seventeen films in Cuddebackville: “I discovered Cuddebackville, the most beautiful, altogether the loveliest spot in America…there is a quality about the light there, particularly a twilight that I have never found elsewhere; it is transcendently illuminative for moving pictures.” Both early studios and silent screen stars Mary Pickford, Mack Sennett, Florence Lawrence, Mabel Normand, Dorothy and Lillian Gish and others had career beginnings in this area.

The festival is also in homage to Warwick’s own cinema palace, the Oakland Theatre, which served the community as a location for vaudeville, opera, music, and movies from the silent era until the 1970s. “For many, the Oakland Theatre was the site of both their first movie and their first date; I, for one, savior memories of B horror movies starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee that I saw during the last years of the Theatre’s existence, said Dr. Robert Schmick executive director of the Warwick Historical Society.

Recently, a World War I era poster came to light advertizing a concert for the “Permanent Blind Relief War Fund For Soldiers and Sailors at the Oakland Theatre”, which exemplifies the integral civic role these early opera houses and cinema palaces played in communities like Warwick and others in addition to providing a public space for a shared movie experience in a movie house, a seemingly rarer occasion these days.

We want to contribute to bringing a little bit more of that community experience back from the past at the A.W. Buckbee Center,” said Dr. Schmick.

This is in homage to the Oakland Theatre----Warwick’s own silent era movie palace.

Circa 1927 ad

No comments:

Post a Comment

At our Summer History Camp this year kids will dig up crystals that fluoresce under a special black light. The crystals were actually discovered in the area as early as the 1820s and collectors from all over the United States and Europe came to the specifically places like Amity in the Town of Warwick to find these rare specimens for their museums, universities and their private collections. One of the largest off site exhibitions of these crystals is found in the Ecoles des Mines in Paris; there are over 150 samples of minerals specifically from Amity, NY in that collection which were discovered in large in the 1830s. What is interesting to imagine is that geologist and mineralogists from the greatest institutions of higher learning were traveling by horseback and carriage to the wilds of Warwick in the 1820s and 1830s to find rocks for their cabinets of curiosities.

Wawayanda Furnace ( 19th century ) the furnace that many of us remember seeing on our trips to the New Jersey State Park actually was integral to iron ore production supplied by Warwick mines. On a recent sojourn into the woods we visited some local iron ore mines that would have supplied the mid-nineteenth century Wawayanda Furnace. Of course, these operations were supplanted by the end of the nineteenth century when places with better quality ore that were closer to cheaper forms of transportation, like water and rail shut them down.

Ken Hamilton, "Woodlands Interpreter", will present the early 18th century life of Algonquin-speaking people, like the Minsi people of the Lenape tribe, of what was later named by Benjamin Aske as "Warwick." Here we see a trade camp with historially accurate artifact reproductions produced by Mr. Hamilton by hand; he an accomplished leatherworker, blacksmith and silversmith. As an "historical artifact artist", Mr. Hamilton produces props used in many living history scenarios and museums throughout the country. He will share some of his knowledge with campers at the Summer History Camp 2012. See further details.