With the release and tremendous success at the Academy Awards of “The Artist” and “Hugo” this year, there has been a new interest in silent films. Indian Mountain students got a head start on exploring early films when Joanna Seaton and Donald Sosin, renowned silent film accompanists and music teachers at the school, presented some of their work in an assembly.

Students watched Buster Keaton in “The High Sign,” a zany, fast-paced comedy filled with the usual Keaton antics. They also saw old clips of children, dressed in stiff Victorian cottons (dress code in the extreme!), doing exercises in their schoolyard. Seaton and Sosin, who perform regularly around the USA and in Europe, played keyboards, piano, and percussion, and demonstrated different styles of accompanying the films. A question-and-answer period followed, during which Seaton and Sosin demonstrated the “the high sign” — the secret signal for Keaton’s Blinking Buzzard’s club.