Ocean Grove's Victorian Day Celebration To Include Silent Film Organist Ben Model

As part of Ocean Grove's Victorian Day celebration, the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association (OGCMA) will present BEN MODEL, one of the nation's leading silent film accompanists, playing for Buster Keaton's classic comedy "Our Hospitality" (1923) on the Great Auditorium Pipe Organ on Saturday August 13.

Showtime is 8 PM. Tickets are $7.00. Visit www.oceangrove.org/victorian. The Great Auditorium is located at Pilgrim and Ocean Pathways in Ocean Grove, NJ. All facilities are handicapped accessible.

BEN MODEL is one of the nation's leading silent film accompanists, and performs on both piano and theatre organ, accompanying silent films in a wide variety of venues across the US and internationally. Over the past four decades, he has created and performed several hundred live scores for silent films on piano and theatre organ.

Ben is a resident film accompanist at the Museum of Modern Art (NY) and at the Library of Congress' Packard Campus Theatre, and regularly performs at classic film festivals, theatres, museums, schools and historic theatres. In March 2020, he launched the popular live-streamed YouTube show "The Silent Comedy Watch Party."

As a film programmer, Ben has co-curated film series for The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and co-programs a monthly silent film series at the Cinema Arts Center. He is the archivist for the Ernie Kovacs/Edie Adams collection, and has curated three DVD box sets of Ernie Kovacs television shows for Shout! Factory. He is also a Visiting Professor of Film Studies at Wesleyan University.

"Our Hospitality" is a 1923 American silent comedy film directed by Buster Keaton and John G. Blystone. It uses slapstick and situational comedy to tell the story of Willie McKay, caught in the middle of the infamous "Canfield-McKay" feud, an obvious satire of the real-life Hatfield-McCoy feud. It was a groundbreaking work for the comedy film genre, as Keaton carefully integrated gags into a dramatically coherent storyline, paid meticulous attention to period detail and created beautiful cinematography with extensive location shooting -in considerable contrast to the era's other slapstick comedies. This timeless, hilarious slapstick comedy ties in with Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association's "Victorian Day" programming, and will bring much-needed laughs to audiences of all ages.

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