What is the Modern Silent Shorts Festival? I’ve been to a lot of film festivals in the past 15 years and I have never experienced one such as the Modern Silent Shorts Festival.
The screening I saw was a The Center at Park West in Manhattan. It's an old church that now serves as an entertainment venue. (See here for more info and how you can support it.) It's magnificent architecture of old was the perfect backdrop to the callback to earlier times. The acoustics were phenomenal. I felt like I was at a classical concert rather than a film screening. the sound enveloped the room and transported me into the film.
My son Shane invited me as he was part of the sound team; having an emphasis on the sound and quality of it is something unusual to a film festival. Especially since it was a "Silent Film Festival." So what was the deal? The deal was that a LIVE band was playing the score for all of the films. What's even more unique is that the filmmakers did not hear the score until the first screening.I think when anyone thinks of a silent film, a black and white vision with people from the 20's in flapper clothing and slapstick comedy and quick, jerky movements comes to mind. These shorts were anything but that. The first short screened, The Weird Guy, followed the idea of an old silent film cleverly updated and in color, but all the others were nothing like what we would think a silent movie would be.
The Sound of the Festival
What I noticed, even though I consider myself a cinephile, was that the lack of spoken dialogue made me listen more to the music to understand and cue me in on the action. I think music is usually secondary to the visuals and dialogue, but this made me realize just how the music ALONE can tell the story if done right.
The festival is the brainchild of arts supporter and philanthropist Boyken Curry (no relation to me) in 2023. Mr. Curry was inspired to create this festival after attending an outdoor screening of an old silent film at his neighbor Isabella Rossellini's home in Long Island. His goal became to commission new works of silent film as a means of re-examining the medium’s original form through a contemporary lens.
The long term goal of Modern Silent Shorts is to create a canon of silent films to play as a single program in public screenings across the country. Together with co-founders Lily Weisberg and Michael Bloom accomplished his goal. This is the third year and this year it ran in five different locations in the NY/NJ tri-state area, each rather unique. One screening was held in a castle on Bannerman Island (NYC) only accessible by boat. Several were sold-out weeks before.
For two hours I watched the 7 films. Each of the films were quite different and ran from comedy to horror to drama. From light-hearted to tackling some of today's issues, each was quite different.
Some had dialogue on screen, some more than others. Some told the story quite well with very little language on screen while others needed the dialogue to move the story forward. Composer Kevin Donald magically brought the stories to life with his original scores. All of them were played by the talents of Kevin Donald, Greg Pease (of the band Flycatcher), Ryan Vinh and Athos Maelstrom.
The 2026 lineup had films by directors Lucas Ansel, Lindsay Calleran, Wes Andre Goodrich, Sandy Honig, Daniel Jaffe, Brendan McHugh, Chloe Xtina and Michele Uranowitz.
I was also surprised at the number of people that filled the room, especially young people. At many film festivals it is the filmmakers and their friends and family who attend, but in this case I think there were many people there just for a night out to experience something new. That gives me hope for the future of film, especially in a theater setting. To me it was a ray of of hope that the young people would come out even on a dreadfully rainy and humid day in the Big Apple to watch something new and exciting.
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Photos and video by Suzanne Ordas Curry
Copyright 2026 SuzeeBehindtheScenes