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.

“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.

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.”

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.

“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.

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.

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

Pam Grady is a freelance writer.