As the intergalactic battle rages on the screen, moviegoers hear in clear digital detail the death rays wreaking ultimate destruction despite the scene being somewhere in space where sound wouldn't last a nanosecond.

Go figure, but that's the magic of modern movies.

So why with all the sensory-laden offerings at the local cineplex would anyone want to spend a day viewing silent films made when Hollywood was in its infancy?

"That's the question I had when I first did one," said Dr. Marvin Faulwell, who will play the organ accompaniment Saturday at a daylong silent film festival staged at White Concert Hall at Washburn University by the university and the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library.

Faulwell, who when not playing the organ practices dentistry in Independence, Mo., said he wasn't too keen on accompanying a silent film when first asked to do so 11 years ago.

However, once he got into the project, Faulwell quickly got hooked on silent films.

"They're just plain good movies. They stand the test of time," Faulwell said.

Providing musical accompaniment to what's happening on the screen makes the organist "part of the movie-making process," Faulwell said. "You get to make the film more meaningful to people."

"It makes it a live performance, and a live performance is always something special," he said.

Denise Morrison agrees.

Morrison, an archivist at the Kansas City Museum in Kansas City, Mo., will introduce the films in the series Saturday.

Morrison attributed her early interest in silent films to hearing her grandmother's stories about playing the piano years ago for silent flicks shown at a St. Louis theater.

"Silents were never silent; there was always accompaniment," Morrison said.

America's biggest theaters boasted full-fledged orchestras playing intricate scores, such as the original music for D.W. Griffith's "Way Down East," which contained 242 tempo changes.

However, no self-respecting theater owner would dare show a silent film without at least an organist or pianist to help set the feeling of the movie.

And not all silent films are just black and white.

Griffith dyed the film stock he used with pastel colors, Morrison said. For example, he would use blue-tinted film for scenes set at night.

Some silent films were tinted by hand.

Morrison said too many people have formed their opinion of silent movies from seeing them on television, perhaps just in snippets as part of commercials where they are used for comic effect.

"When you see them on television, they're speeded up," she said.

While there is a uniform sound-projection speed of 24 frames a second, there is no such standard in silent films.

Silent film cinematographers used hand-cranked cameras. They speeded up or slowed down the movement from film to film -- even within a single movie -- from 16 to 20-odd frames a second as the action dictated.

To complicate things further, the director often intended the film to be projected faster than it had been shot in order to made the slapstick funnier or the stunts crisper.

An ignorant projectionist could turn a tragedy into a comedy or vice versa.

For Morrison and other silent film buffs, the absence of dialogue in those movies is no shortcoming but rather a virtue to be celebrated. Not hearing the dialogue forces the viewer to become a more fully interactive partner with the movie.

"Silent films require concentration. You are a creative component of the film," Morrison said.

"You use your imagination. You give these people voices. You give these people characteristics. It requires a little more concentration than just having the tube on or watching a present-day movie when it's all given to you," she said.

"Audiences back then were so much more a part of their films, so much more so than they are today," Morrison added.

"The disadvantage in this society of 'get it quick, get it now' is you do have to invest more in these films than you would in today's films," she said.

However, for those willing to make the investment and in a setting where the films are shown on a big screen, at the proper speed and with live musical accompaniment, Morrison said:

"You see everything in those films you would see in today's films. You see spectacular stunts. You see beautiful matte shots, beautiful photography. It's wonderful."