Movies

Upcoming silent film shows

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My silent film for October 2024 will be The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. As usual, I’ll provide live, (mostly) improvised accompaniment. I’ll livestream it on YouTube on Wednesday, October 9, at 8 PM. On Saturday 11, I’ll accompany it again at the Plaistow, NH Library at 1 PM.

When I accompany a silent film, I improvise the music based on a general plan that includes some motifs devised in advance. For this movie, I’ll include a bit of Beethoven for certain scenes, just because it works so well.

This movie is almost as famous for its sets as for its characters and story. Everything is askew; there’s hardly a right angle to be seen in the buildings. The scenery adds to the sense of a nightmare experience. The story concerns a carnival showman whose main exhibit is a sleepwalker who never wakes. Cesare, the sleepwalker, obeys Caligari’s orders, even when it means committing murder. But there is an even greater surprise in store.

I really enjoy adding music to silent films for a live audience, or at least a real-time streaming audience. Recently I got to see Ben Model, one of the most famous silent film accompanists in the USA, accompany The Mark of Zorro on a pipe organ. It was worth the two-hour drive to Vermont.

YouTube copyright nonsense

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The showing of The Golem went pretty well. I got a notification of a copyright claim, though. It’s from “A Kidnapping Scandal: The Florence Cassez Affair,” which is a Netflix series I’d never heard of. It can’t make a legitimate copyright claim on any part of The Golem, obviously. Maybe I played four or five notes in sequence that were similar to the theme music from the show? Or maybe the show includes some footage of the old movie, and YouTube’s robots decided that the makers of that series now hold copyright to the old movie. Who knows? Fortunately it’s “not a copyright strike,” since the copyright holder allows usage of the alleged copyrighted content. It could affect my monetizing the show, but I don’t expect to try. I get the impression that challenging a spurious copyright claim on YouTube can get you into worse trouble than ignoring it, so I’ll leave it alone.

Coming silent film: The Golem

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In July, I’ll accompany the 1920 German silent film The Golem twice. On Tuesday, July 16, I’ll livestream it with keyboard accompaniment on YouTube at 8 PM Eastern Time. On Friday, July 26, I’ll accompany it live at the Plaistow Public Library at 1 PM. Watch both if you like; you’ll hear it accompanied two different ways. Please “like” the YouTube item if you’re inclined to give it a boost; that will make it more discoverable.

This is the third Golem movie that Paul Wegener made and the only one that survives. Its full title is Der Golem: Wie er in die Welt kam (The Golem: How he came into the world). Unlike the others, it deals directly with the legend of Rabbi Löw’s creation of a golem to protect the Jewish people.
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Silent film “One Week” rescheduled

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My livestreaming of the Buster Keaton short “One Week,” with live accompaniment by me, is rescheduled for Wednesday, June 26, at 8 PM Eastern time. I still haven’t solved the problem with my laptop, but if I can’t fix it in two weeks, I should turn in my computer science degrees.

Thanks and apologies to everyone who showed up yesterday.