How a percussionist turned a silent film presentation into an interactive event

Lost art of live sound effects and the earliest known animation by a woman are among the highlights of this year’s San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

A scene from the Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy short “Battle of the Century” (1927), which will screen in the program “Stan & Ollie” at the 2023 San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

Photo: Courtesy S.F. Silent Film Festival

It’s not often that watching silent films becomes an interactive event. But Nicholas White does not provide the usual type of accompaniment to those historic nitrate classics.

White, a classically trained percussionist, collects antique “traps” — whistles, blocks, bells, ratchets, anvils — that he uses to recreate the lost art of providing live sound effects in silent cinema.

White is set to be at the Castro Theatre on Thursday, July 13, to perform a segment in theSan Francisco Silent Film Festival’sannual “Amazing Tales from the Archives,” and says he’ll be pulling out all the stops.

Animation pioneer Bessie Mae Kelley is the creator of the earliest surviving hand-drawn animation that was animated and directed by a woman. Her work is featured in “Amazing Tales from the Archives” at the 2023 San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

Photo: Courtesy S.F. Silent Film Festival

“I’ve compiled all those moments into a seven-minute clip in which my hands and feet are constantly moving,” White told The Chronicle by video interview from his home in Chicago. “Don’t be afraid to come up to me. I am performing all these little gadgets from afar and I really want people to come up and see it up close and make it interactive and not something from a distance.”

“Amazing Tales from the Archives,” now in its 17th year as part of theSilent Film Festival, was the brainchild of the festival’s Executive Director Stacy Wisnia. It was conceived as a peek behind the curtain at the work being done by the film archives around the world that exhibit their collections at the San Francisco festival.

San Francisco Silent Film Festival’s Rob Byrne, Anita Monga and Stacey Wisnia at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco in 2017.

Photo: Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle

Now a free annual event, “Amazing Tales” highlights what Artistic DirectorAnita Mongadescribes as “the detective work” that goes into preserving silent films.

“It’s always fun to have people come from around the world to talk about some new discovery or some new quirk,” Monga said. “Also, we’re not really diehards about it strictly coming from an archive and this year is that to the nth degree, because, for instance, Nicholas White, is not part of an archive. He’s a collector of amazing, ancient sound effects. I thought it’d be really fun to have him demonstrate what the world was like in analog.”

Sketches by Bessie Mae Kelley, the creator of the earliest surviving hand-drawn animation that was animated and directed by a woman. Her work is featured in “Amazing Tales from the Archives” at the 2023 San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

Photo: Courtesy S.F. Silent Film Festival

Also on the “Amazing Archives” program: “Animated Lady” explores the work of pioneering animator Bessie Mae Kelley; and “Goodwill Ambassadresses” features a screening of “Doll Messengers of Friendship,” a recently discovered 1927 documentary short about an exchange of thousands of dolls between the United States and Japan.

“Doll Messengers of Friendship” is presented by Chicago Film Society co-founder Kyle Westphal, a longtime festival collaborator. The society preserved the nine-minute fragment, the only segment of the film known to survive, after discovering it among 500 reels in an Elmwood Park, Ill., estate.

“Doll Messengers of Friendship” is a 1927 short documentary about a cultural exchange between the United States and Japan after World War I.

Photo: Courtesy S.F. Silent Film Festival

“We were talking to people in Japan at the Shibusawa Eiichi Memorial Museum, and they’ve never heard of this film,” Westphal recalled. “It’s this kind of historical lacuna, this moment after the Russo-Japanese war in 1904-05 and the Immigration Act of 1924, which set down xenophobic and racist standards that explicitly barred much Asian immigration, especially Japanese; and before Pearl Harbor and World War II and the (internment) camps in the U.S.”

It was the absence of a historical record of female animators that intrigued Los Angeles-based historian and author Mindy Johnson, who is scheduled to present Kelley’s work, the earliest known animation by a woman. Johnson had finished her book, “Ink & Paint: The Women of Walt Disney’s Animation,” focusing on the female artists involved with classic cartoons, and turned her curiosity to the silent era.

“龙画家”,由威廉·沃辛ton and starring Sessue Hayakawa and Tsuru Aoki, is a rare Hollywood silent-era film to feature an almost entirely Asian cast. The outdoor scenes of the 1919 film were filmed at Yosemite National Park.

Photo: Courtesy S.F. Silent Film Festival

Aware that many of the early animators worked in vaudeville, Johnson started her research there and discovered a reference to Kelley. For years, all Johnson had was a name, but her sleuthing eventually led her not just to the woman’s family but to a great-nephew in possession of boxes of his aunt’s material.

He tried to “get anyone to pay attention” to her work, Johnson said. “But, oh no, ‘women didn’t do that.’ It took this sort of perfect storm of me searching over many years and someone who really understood this rich history of women in the animation industry and the film history of that time.”

So rich is Kelley’s archive that Johnson is writing a book on her and planning a documentary. Kelley’s history as an animator included work on Max Fleischer’s “Out of the Inkwell” cartoons.

“She created the first animated mouse couple nine years before another very famous mice couple appeared,” Johnson said, referring to Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

Nicholas White has amassed an enormous number of antique “traps” (whistles, blocks, bells, ratchets, anvils, used for live Foley) and will demonstrate the lost art of creating live sound effects in silent cinema in the “Amazing Tales from the Archives” program at the 2023 San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

Photo: Courtesy S.F. Silent Film Festival

As for White, festivalgoers will have two more opportunities this year to see his work. He is expected to provide sound effects for the “Stan & Ollie” collection of shorts as part of the festival’s Saturday, July 15, program. Then later in the fall, he will be seen on-screen employing his collection of instruments in Martin Scorsese’s highly anticipated epic “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

White credits his sister, Viki Conner, for encouraging him to put his hobby to practical use. She also gets credit for putting him in touch with Chicago-based organist Jay Warren, who first gave White the opportunity to add live sound effects to a film.

“I kind of had to invent — I wasn’t the first person to do it, obviously because they did it 100 years ago — but I would write out the synopsis of the film and what I would do at what points in the film,” White said. “I’d make a map, and along with Jay, we were the first people to do that after 100 years. It was fun to bring it alive.”

Clarification:Chicago Film Society co-founder Kyle Westphal misstated the museum where he discussed the “Doll Messengers of Friendship.” It was the Shibusawa Eiichi Memorial Museum

More Information

2023 San Francisco Silent Film Festival Highlights

“The Iron Mask”:The festival opens with this rousing swashbuckler starring Douglas Fairbanks as dashing musketeer D’Artagnan on a quest to save the king of France.

7 p.m. Wednesday, July 12. $25.

“Amazing Tales from the Archives”:The work of a pioneering woman animator, a short documentary recalling a goodwill exchange between the U.S. and Japan, and an example of early sound effects comprise this year’s program, an annual presentation that highlights the work of people keeping silent film alive.

11 a.m. Thursday, July 13. Free.

“The Dragon Painter”:The Masaru Koga Ensemble provides live accompaniment to this 1919 melodrama. Sessue Hayakawa stars as an artistic genius in this drama shot largely in Yosemite.

周五下午7点,7月14日。25美元。

“Stan & Ollie”:Wayne Barker provides the music and Nicholas White the live sound effects to three classic Laurel and Hardy shorts.

11 a.m. Saturday, July 15. $18.

“The Edward E. Horton Show!”:Two shorts starring the character actor known for his voice and droll delivery in films like “Top Hat” and “Holiday” and as the narrator of “Fractured Fairy Tales.”

11 a.m. Sunday, July 16. $18.

“A Daughter of Destiny”:Film preservationist Stefan Drössler, winner of the 2023 San Francisco Silent Film Festival Award, introduces this twisted fable of a scientist who falls in love with his subject of study, the daughter of a prostitute inseminated by a hanged man as nature-vs.-nurture experiment. Brigitte Helm (“Metropolis”) stars.

5 p.m. Sunday, July 16. $20.

San Francisco Silent Film Festival:Wednesday-Sunday, July 12-16. Free-$25. Castro Theatre, 429 Castro St., S.F.silentfilm.org

Pam Grady is a freelance writer.

  • Pam Grady