“It was like both sides of my brain exploded,” commented a 10-year-old audience member at Alloy Orchestra showing of The General at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

That same experience will be coming to the Mill Pond Center for the Arts in Durham on Friday, Aug. 12.
What’s so inspiring about the Alloy Orchestra is that these shows don’t feel like something you should go to because it’s good for you; you want to go because nobody else is having this much fun.

Performing in repertoire around the world, from Lincoln Center to the Louvre, from annual premieres at Telluride Film Festival to the Somewhat North of Boston (SNOB) film fest in Concord, the Alloy boys breathe new life into films that wouldn’t be shown regularly otherwise. Their impact is not only in performance, but in their legacy, too, as the group often commissions new 35mm prints from the original camera negatives.

But what’s so great about their show is the sheer inventiveness of the music, some performed on clarinet or banjo, some banged out on synthesizer or junk percussion like hubcaps and truck springs, all adding deep eeriness to long, bony hands or malevolent glares, or, in the case of The General (1926, U.S., 79 min.), grand energy to madcap chase scenes.

The adventure-comedy-romance, directed by Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman, stars Keaton as a Civil War-era Southern train engineer rejected from the military but given the opportunity to prove his bravery when Yankee spies kidnap his girl.

Speaking of Telluride, mark your calendars for the annual Telluride by the Sea weekend madness, to take place Sept. 16, 17 and 18 at The Music Hall, with six movies coming to Portsmouth on their first stop after their world and/or North American premieres in Colorado. Last year’s surprises included House of Flying Daggers, Finding Neverland and Kontroll.

Also in September, the annual Banff Radical Reels Film Festival, a positively buoyant two-hour presentation of the best outdoor sports short films from the Banff Centre in Canada returns to the Ioka on Sept. 29 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $20 per seat, to benefit Avis Goodwin Community Health Center (www.avisgoodwinchc.org). Tickets will go on sale in September at the CHC office.