Hadley Council on Aging Hosts Interactive Silent Film History Program for Seniors

HADLEY — July 22, 2025 — Hadley Council on Aging hosts an afternoon of silent film history and live audience participation. A presenter — a Worcester-based maker-space fabricator and self-taught silent film accompanist who did not identify themselves by name on camera — guided seniors through the arc of American cinema from Edison's 1894 motion picture camera through the end of the silent era in 1929, screening archival clips featuring Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Roscoe Arbuckle. The presenter also demonstrated three handmade praxinoscopes — 19th-century mirror-and-animation-strip devices the presenter designs and cuts using a laser machine in Worcester under the brand name Whimsical Animations — and recruited six audience members to operate washboard, whistle, slapstick, clacker, ooga horn, and triangle as live sound effects synchronized to the 1913 short Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life. No Council on Aging committee business was conducted and no votes were taken.