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WARWICK — The Warwick Historical Society and the Neversink Valley Museum of History will celebrate Orange County’s role in movie history and how Hollywood began by those who created it at the first annual Orange County Silent Film Festival which is scheduled for July 29 and 30 at the A.W. Buckbee Center in Warwick. Directors, actors, actresses and producers came to Orange County in the earlier part of the 19th Century to create films. Director D.W. Griffith, for one, created 17 films in Cuddebackville. He wrote: “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 also pays 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,” said Dr. Robert Schmick executive director of the Warwick Historical Society. “I, for one, savior memories of B horror movies starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee that I saw during the last years of the theater’s existence.” Recently, a World War I era poster came to light advertising a concert for the “Permanent Blind Relief War Fund For Soldiers and Sailors at the Oakland Theatre,” which exemplifies the civic role these early theaters played in communities like Warwick, Schmick said.

If you go There will be four sessions of the Orange County Silent Film Festival, which will be held at the A.W. Buckbee Center, 2 Colonial Ave., Warwick:

Sunday, July 29, from 1 to 3 p.m. and from 4 to 6 p.m. Monday, July 30, from noon to 2 p.m. and from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is $10, $5 for children under 12.

The festival is a cooperative presentation by The Neversink Valley Museum of History & Innovation and Warwick Historical Society. Reservations are strongly suggested by contacting the museum at 845-754-8870 or historical society at 845-986-3276.