How is silent cinema perceived today? It may enchant with its naivety, but if you think it can’t enchant or entertain, you’re quite wrong! You only have to look at the huge popularity of the Silent Cinema Festival, held at Pod Baranami Cinema for almost two decades. The leading motif of the 18th event (7-10 December) is Elements.
The festival opens at the Manggha Museum with a screening of Marcel L’Herbier’s moving cinematic poem Man of the Open Seas (1920) with live accompaniment by Księżyc. The programme at Pod Baranami Cinema features Halka, directed by Konstanty Meglicki and with music by Jerzy Rogiewicz; based on Stanisław Moniuszko’s opera, the film has been digitally reconstructed eighty years after its original release. We will also see Leni Riefenstahl and the flying ace of the First World War Ernst Udet in The White Hell of Piz Palü (1929, dir. Arnold Fanck and Georg Wilhelm Pabst) with music by the Pin Park duo, and the masterpiece of Ukrainian cinematography: Alexander Dovzhenko’s Earth (1930) with live accompaniment by Bastarda. Herbert G. Ponting’s The Great White Silence (1924), documenting the British expedition to the South Pole in 1910, makes a welcome return to the festival after a five year break. Music comes courtesy of Semi-Invented Trio. We will also see the 1924 The Flood – the last film by the master of cinematic Impressionism Louis Delluc.
The youngest viewers are in for a treat with a screening of one of the first ever science fiction films: Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon (1902) with music by the Cracovian ensemble SALK. Kids join the musicians in preparing and performing accompaniment to excerpts from the film, and during workshops with Justyna Droń they learn about tools used by pioneers of moving pictures.
It will be elemental!
