Back in her day, around 1910, a collie from Eastport named Jean was deemed “the greatest dog actress in the world.” Likely the country’s first canine movie star, she was so popular she got more fan mail than her studio’s human actors.

The popular pooch’s films, including two shot in Maine, will be featured at Dog Day Afternoon: A Celebration of Canine Stars in Silent Film, a festival at the Johnson Hall Opera House in Gardiner on Saturday. The afternoon showing of old-time films also will include a feature film starring the most famous dog star of the silent movie era, Rin Tin Tin, a German shepherd who starred in more than two dozen feature films.

“Jean was the first dog star of American films, years before Teddy (The Wonder Dog), or Rin Tin Tin or Lassie,” said Belgrade silent film expert and restorer Ed Lorusso, curator and host of the film festival. “She was a huge draw, and paved the way for all the dog stars that came after.”

And, harkening back to when movie theaters showing silent films were far from actually being silent, the festival’s showings will be accompanied as they would have been back in their heyday by live music to match the action on the screen by Jeff Rapsis, a noted New Hampshire pianist. Rapsis, who also played at last year’s  silent film festival, started playing music to accompany silent films about 15 years ago and said he enjoys the improvisation involved in accompanying a film with a live audience.

“It’s adds a whole other level to the performance,” Lorusso said. “Silent films were never silent, they always had live music, either piano, someone on violin, or a small orchestra. The Colonial Theater (in Augusta), had their own orchestra from 1913 up through 1929, up until talkies came in.”

The festival will include three movies featuring Jean the Vitagraph Dog, so named for Vitagraph studios — “Jean the Match-Maker,” “Where the Wind Blows” and “Jean and the Waif,” all released in 1910. They’re each 12 to 14 minutes in length, which used to be standard for movies made in the early years, before filmmakers realized people would sit long enough to watch movies of an hour or more.

Two of those three movies were shot in southern Maine by Vitagraph studios, which was based in New York but would sometimes make movies in Maine during the hot summer months.

Jean, whose owner Larry Trimble was from Robbinston, appeared in about 24 films from 1910 to 1916 and was acclaimed to be “the greatest dog actress in the world.”

The festival will also show movies with Shep the Dog, also a collie; Teddy the Wonder Dog, a Great Dane who appeared in films with superstars Gloria Swanson and Mary Pickford; and Rin Tin Tin.

Rin Tin Tin’s 75-minute “Clash of the Wolves,” is the festival’s feature-length film; other films clock in at between 10 and 25 minutes.

The film festival started three years ago at the Colonial Theater and remains sponsored by the theater, which will get the proceeds from ticket sales. The Colonial, which was vacant and largely abandoned for many years, is undergoing major renovations and can’t currently host the festival or other such events.

The festival moved for last year and this year to the Logan Stage, the smaller downstairs theater at Johnson Hall in Gardiner.

Cathy Milojevic-Kaey, director of the Colonial Theater since former Director Kathi Wall stepped down last year, said the Augusta theater originally showed only silent films from 1913 to 1929, when it was upgraded to be able to show films with audio. People who want to check out the theater for themselves, amid the restoration project, may do so in free self-guided tours from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays through the second week of September, and on Aug. 23 and Sept. 13.

Milojevic-Kaey said work at the theater, which closed in 1969, continues, with a recently awarded $30,000 grant from the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation paying for electrical system upgrades, including outlets and new lighting, sound and projection equipment. A $1.5 million federal grant to pay for expanding the stage was secured in 2023 and is still secure and not part of any of the recent federal budget cuts, Milojevic-Kaey said. Work on the project is on hold as they seek to secure additional funding to bundle work on that project with other projects to make the work more efficient, she said.

Lorusso hopes to return the silent film festival to the Colonial Theater next year.

Tickets to the festival, which runs from noon-4 p.m. Saturday and will include seven films, are available online for $28.52.