DOWAGIAC — The adage, “some things are best left unsaid,” may be proven correct at an upcoming event taking place this month as part of the Dogwood Fine Arts Festival.

The Dogwood Fine Arts Festival will be hosting a presentation on silent films at 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 10 in the Dale A. Lyons Building at Southwestern Michigan College, 580900 Cherry Grove Road, Dowagiac. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased by visiting dogwoodfinearts.org or by calling (269) 782-1115.

The presentation will be led by Jay Warren, photoplay organist for the Silent Film Society of Chicago. He will show “Safety Last!,” a 1923 silent film starring Harold Lloyd, while playing a full organ accompaniment.

“This should be a lot of fun,” said Dogwood Fine Arts Festival Chair Jim Benedix. “Silent film caught [the festival board’s] imagination. … I think it was the novelty of it — the fact that although it is very old, it is new to us. You almost have to insert your imagination into the story because you don’t have the dialog.”

Warren said he was honored to be asked by the Dogwood Festival to perform this month. Friday afternoon, he will also be giving a private presentation to students at Dowagiac Union Schools as part of the festival’s annual Klassics for Kids event. He said both events would be a good introduction for people who are unfamiliar with silent cinema by going over different eras of silent films and discussing different silent film actors and how their work impacted cinema history.

“I love to share silent cinema, and we are so honored to have gotten that call,” Warren said.

While some may not think of silent films as fine arts, Warren said that he considers them to be both a visual and musical art form, as back in their peak, silent films were often accompanied by live music.

“This is the roots of cinema,” Warren said. “This was an art form unto itself. Without audio, actors really had to emote. … We are calling attention to what was and what should be preserved.”

Both Warren and Benedix said they would encourage locals to visit attend the May 10 silent film event as they believe that attendees will experience something new.

“It is something fun and quirky, and we really think people will enjoy it,” Benedix said.

“Some people are always skeptical [before seeing a silent film for the first time],” Warren added. “But I know that when the music starts up and the film starts going … by the end, we will have them.”