Silent Film & Live Music: A Colour Box
- 3pm
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About this event:
- Category:
- New Music
- Event type:
- Booking required | In-person
- Admission:
- £14.50
- Location:
- Barbican Cinema 1
Event information
Experience the magic of silent film at Barbican Cinema, enhanced by live piano and electronics, performing original compositions by our Electronic & Produced Music students.
Burst into summer with this vibrant programme of early and pre-Technicolor short films featuring butterflies, fairies, fireworks, crystals and more.
We tend to think of early films as being black and white, when in fact cinema has been a colourful medium and artform from its earliest decades. From the mid-1890s, filmmakers could make use of tinting, hand- and stencil-colouring, and the early experimental systems that predated Technicolor.
A surprising variety of material was brought to the screen in colour – not just the prestige productions of foundational filmmakers such as Georges Méliès, but also science films, travelogues and early abstract animations.
The Barbican has carefully curated a selection for you here, all presented with music composed by Guildhall School's Electronic & Produced Music department.
Programme & Performers
Director and Music Supervisor: Barbara De Biasi
Executive Producer: Mike Roberts
Musicians from Guildhall School's Electronic & Produced Music department
Ruttmann: Lichtspiel Opus I (Germany 1921 Dir Walter Ruttmann 11 min) Courtesy of Lightcone, Paris
Metomorpheses of a Butterfly (France 1911, 10 min) Courtesy of CINEMATEK – Cinémathèque royale de Belgique
The Fairy of the Stars (France 1902, 2 min) Courtesy of EYE Filmmuseum Amsterdam
From the Realms of the Crystals (The Netherlands 1928 Dir Jan Cornelis Mol 9 min) Courtesy of EYE Filmmuseum Amsterdam
The Factory of Hats of Paper in Japan (France 1916 Pathé 12 min) Courtesy of the Gaumont-Pathé Archives. Image credit: The Factory of Hats of Paper in Japan, Pathé newsreel, 1916 © GP archives
Dutch Types (France 1910 Pathé 3 min) Courtesy of the Cineteca di Bologna
Bob's Electric Theatre (France 1906 Dir Segundo de Chomón 5 min) Digital presentation courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive
Grand Display of Brock's Fireworks at the Crystal Palace (UK 1904 Dir G A Smith 5 min) Courtesy of Collezioni Museo Nazionale del Cinema - Torino
The King of Dollars (France 1905 Dir Segundo de Chomón 2 min) Courtesy of EYE Filmmuseum Amsterdam
Lichtspiel, Opus IV (Germany 1925 Dirs Walter Ruttmann, Lore Leudesdorff 4 min) Courtesy of Lightcone, Paris
The Merry Frolics of Satan (France 1906 Dir Georges Méliès 18 min) Courtesy of FPA Classics
