Ken Winokur has a passion for writing musical scores to accompany silent films, and for more than 17 years, he’s been taking the stage almost weekly to play alongside an increasing catalogue of classic wordless epics. The films may be old, but Mr. Winokur, who leads the Alloy Orchestra, a trio of musicians that composes and performs music for silent movies, said that the experience is always new to a healthy portion of the audience.

“We see that almost every show, where someone comes up and says they had to drag their friend kicking and screaming to the film, but that once the movie started, they were just mesmerized by the experience, truly transported to a different era,” Mr. Winokur said. “Most people have very little concept of what a silent film is going to be. They’re usually not able to anticipate what it’s going be like, particularly with the Alloy Orchestra at the helm. The very best silent films are really engaging, surprisingly sophisticated, captivating multimedia events that can be more engaging than contemporary talkies.”

For thousands of audiences, it’s been the Alloy Orchestra (today comprised of director Mr. Winokur, musician and vocalist Terry Donahue, and keyboardist Roger Miller) that has restored relevance to silent films. The trio has written modern, electronic, bombastic scores that have ushered such greats as Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” (1927), F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu” (1922), and Buster Keaton’s “The General” (1927) into the 21st century. Since Alloy’s breakthrough performance, when it presented an original score for “Metropolis” at the 1991 Telluride Film Festival, the trio has been in near constant demand at art houses around the world. Roger Ebert tagged the ensemble the “best in the world at accompanying silent films.”

Starting this weekend, Mr. Winokur and company will serve as the centerpiece performers of the New York Film Festival’s special silent films side program, a limited-run, three-film series that is one of the unsung highlights of the two-week event.

“The Film Society at Lincoln Center, it’s a place run by people more passionate about silent films than just about anywhere,” Mr. Winokur said. “And the Walter Reade Theater is one of the very best places in the world to see a silent film, with the best projection, films cropped perfectly, and silents shown at the right speeds — all things that are done incorrectly at more theaters than you might imagine, which is why silent films can so often look jerky and out of sync.”

Scheduled to take center stage for two special festival performances on October 4, Alloy this year has elected to accompany the groundbreaking and relatively inaccessible Josef von Sternberg film “Underworld,” which made its original premiere in a single New York theater in 1927 before creating a sensation in the city and then captivating the nation. “Underworld,” which catapulted von Sternberg (“The Last Command,” “The Blue Angel”) into the pantheon of international directors, stands as the first bona fide gangster film — a blueprint for the genre that would soon spawn 1931’s “The Public Enemy,” 1932’s “Scarface” and 1938’s “Angels With Dirty Faces.

Mr. Winokur, who is always on the hunt for new titles to add to Alloy’s extensive repertoire — and always committed to contrast the well-known classic silents with such lesser-known masterpieces as the 1927 Rudolph Valentino vehicle “The Eagle” — said the group stumbled onto “Underworld” quite by accident. During talks with Paramount about access to other silent prints, the studio suggested von Sternberg’s film as a possibility. Having only once seen a version of “Underworld,” in a Chicago video store as a fourth-generation VHS copy, Mr. Winokur knew he’d found a gem.

“It was just a no-brainer,” he said. “‘Underworld’ has been talked about forever — the first gangster film that all the film historians write about as this monumental achievement — but until now you haven’t been able to see it outside of an archival print, and they almost never rent those out.”

Prior to the gritty action of “Underworld” and the world premiere of the new Alloy score, which evokes the flapping New York jazz scene of the era, the film festival will host special screenings of two other silent films. This Saturday, a rare 1920 German version of “Hamlet” will be screened to a live piano accompaniment. The film was restored by the German Film Institute and features the great Danish screen actress Asta Nielson as the murderous prince of Denmark — a notable casting choice, inverting Hamlet from a man to a woman and thus skewing the classic’s sexual undertones.

For festival goers, the silent film sidebar provides the paradoxical opportunity to see these films as they were — silent, with live accompaniment — and as they are best seen now — restored digitally and projected onto the big screen. To Mr. Winokur, that makes the event a once-in-lifetime multimedia experience that you won’t get from any of the festival’s feature film premieres.

“When I go to festivals — and I go to a lot of them — I go to the catalogue and start checking things that I wouldn’t be able to see at my local theater,” he said. “I’m a film addict. I go to University screenings, museums, film festivals, but there are certain things that stand out as unique opportunities, and ‘Underworld,’ as well as these other silent titles, are things you just can’t miss if you love movies. The silent era has pretty much been forgotten by the mainstream, but all it takes is going to one of these events to be reminded of how exciting and important these early days of cinema truly were.”

ssnyder@nysun.com