Get involved in Northern Silent Film Festival 2024

After a successful debut in 2023, Northern Silent Film Festival returns this autumn. This month-long festival celebrates new music with film across the North. The second edition will run from 28th September to 31st October 2024, and proposals are welcome now.

NSFF is open to venues, organisations and individuals, whether professional or voluntary, anywhere in the north of England, to present live-scored film this autumn. All kinds of proposals are welcome, as long as they involve a combination of film and live music/sound. There are no limitations on the kind of music/sound - we’re open to all genres and approaches. 

Information about the 2024 festival themes, and some film suggestions, are here. We welcome proposals which connect with these themes, and those that don’t. For some films, Northern Silents has ‘in principle’ license agreements which festival partners can participate in, and for some films we will connect you directly to the distributor or archive so you can arrange your own screening license.

The Northern Silents team can offer advice on musicians. We’ll publish a directory of Northern silent film musicians, or, if you’d like us to supply a musician from our stable of talented players, we can do that. We like to bring new sound worlds to audiences - there are no preferred musical styles. Any kind of live, organised sound qualifies as music.

NSFF artistic director Jonny Best said: “We have big plans for Northern Silent Film Festival, and hope it will grow each year, fostering the development of live-scored film presentation in the North. We want to create opportunities for musicians to develop film accompaniment skills, and bring a varied and exciting selection of programming to audiences.”

You can read more about NSFF 2024 and how it all works here.

Interested in presenting a live-scored cinema event in the North this autumn? We’d love to hear from you!

Please email expressions of interest as soon as possible, or by 5th April at the latest, via the link below.