Two rare silent films — one a Western morality tale in which a killer is pursued by a mob and hanged, the other a more light-hearted adventure tale about counterfeiters — shed light on two unsung pioneers of the movie business.

Accompanied by a new soundtrack written specifically for it by College of Santa Fe alumni Jonathan Grossman, Tracked by Bloodhounds — also known as A Lynching At Cripple Creek — was made by Chicago-based filmmaker William Selig on location in 1904. For the other film, Sigmund Lubin's The Counterfeiters (1905), Grossman relied on a public-domain piano score by the late Joe "Fingers" Carr.

The two films play at 11 a.m. Saturday at the Screen at the College of Santa Fe as part of this year's Santa Fe Film Festival. This is the ninth year of the festival, which continues at various venues through Sunday and includes screenings, panel talks and parties.

The two shorts — part of the G. William Jones Film and Video Collection of Southern Methodist University in Texas — will be introduced and discussed by film historian and author Andrew Erish, who has just completed a biography of the long-defunct Selig Polyscope Co.

Selig, Erish said by phone from Orange, Calif., where he teaches film at Chapman University, was probably the first filmmaker to shoot movies in authentic, historical locations. He made several Tom Mix westerns in Las Vegas, N.M., around 1915.

Tracked by Bloodhounds reflected the "Western justice" mentality of the mining community of Cripple Creek, Colo. That community had just emerged from a lengthy mining strike fraught with scabs, brutal police action, lynchings and a bombing that killed a number of people, Erish said.

"It's essentially the first time that a film benefited from a real-life situation happening," he said. "Selig capitalized on that and said some of the people involved in the latest incidents (in the strike) had taken part in the film. The guy with the bloodhounds in the film supposedly tracked down some of the major ringleaders responsible for planting a bomb two months earlier."

While Selig's film is basically one long chase scene (the bloodhounds are actually relegated to a supporting role), The Counterfeiters benefits from some early cinematic camera techniques. There's a pan shot, a brief medium-shot of some principals in jail and a rare (for the time) reverse shot of a character peering into a window.

"There's a little piece here, a little piece there of things we take for granted now — in cinematic language a reverse shot, parallel editing, however you want to describe these things, that filmmakers hadn't thought of prior to that time," Erish said.

Selig was more of an innovator than Lubin, Erish said. The latter was known for copying other filmmakers' styles and, in some cases, making shot-for-shot remakes of other films. But Selig was the first to make on-location westerns as well as jungle adventure films. He even started stocking animals in a zoo to use for such pictures. After his studio closed in 1918 — due to dwindling European markets during World War I, among other things — the zoo remained open into the 1920s.

Likewise, Erish credits Selig with playing a large role in defining Hollywood as the filmmaking capitol of the country, since he moved his studio out there in 1909. After his success there, other film companies followed suit.

Grossman was asked to provide a score by Amy Turner, head of the Jones Film & Video Collection. "It's very difficult to get an audience to sit still for a silent film that doesn't have music in it," she explained by phone from Dallas. Stephen Rubin, program director for the Santa Fe Film Festival, recommended Grossman for the job, she noted.

Grossman, who lives in Santa Fe, said his score serves to "add to the mood of the film but not overpower it. It's a drone-y, dark, tension-building, atmospheric — and out-of-key — score," he said. "I also wanted a bit of a live sound feel to is, so I recorded some weird guitar live on top and edited it." He was still working on synchronizing the score at press time.

Erish estimates Selig made about 4,000 films, roughly 200 of which still exist. Bloodhounds was probably shot in three days for about $150, he noted, with very few professional actors involved. The posse members, for example, were "probably whoever they could pick up to be in there."

Contact Robert Nott at 986-3021 or rnott@sfnewmexican.com.

The Santa Fe Film Festival continues at various venues through Sunday. See www.santafefilmfestival.com, call 989-1495 or visit the box office, 519 Cerrillos Road.