Back the Electric Palace

What a great evening of live music and silent films! It was great to bring together two styles of 'art' and blend them together in front of a very diverse audience. In essence the evening was split into two parts, the first part was music performed by Psappha conducted by Nicholas Kok and the second part was a collection of 5 short American films from the beginning of the last century:

(from the programme)

'The Life and Death of 9413, A Hollywood Extra music by Larry Goves. A beautifully inventive fantasy of Orwellian dystopia in the early Hollywood star system with an uncanny contemporary resonance'

'The Thieving Hand, music by Sasha Siem, Socio - political satire brilliantly realised as slapstick comedy in the tale of a armed beggar who acquires a kleptomaniac limb'

'The Teddy Bears music improvised by Psappha. An enigmatic and bizzare reinvention of the Goldilocks fairytale inspired by a Teddy Roosevelt anecdote'

'The Bridge music by Tim Wright. A brilliantly directed fable of wartime exploring the sophisticated dramatic potential of silent film'

'The Musketeers of Pig Alley music by Gabriel Prokofiev. Probably the first ever film about organised crime by the godfather of narrative cinema, heavily influential on Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas and Gangs of New York'

I loved the last 2 in particular because of the immense power of silent film which is realised in the films, particularly the 'The Bridge' where a Spy is hanged off a bridge but then escapes only to realise that it was a dream and was hung, the fantastic acting, the dream - like sequences and edge of your seat tension made it for me the best picture of the evening!

Fantastic!

Have a nice weekend!

Marcus