silent film

Film Preview: “The Man Who Laughs” — A Perfect Fit for the Berklee Silent Film Orchestra

June 14, 2018
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This effort is the most ‘Hollywood’ score the BSFO has created yet, a plush musical carpet for The Man Who Laughs’s emotional high and lows.

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Film Interview: Jeff Rapsis’ Code of Silents

September 22, 2017
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For the past decade, Jeff Rapsis has improvised live scores for silent films starring Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks.

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Film Preview: Silent Film Comedian Raymond Griffith — Sophisticated Slapstick

May 12, 2016
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A rare opportunity to see — on the big screen — a film starring Boston-born silent comedian Raymond Griffith, a master of the debonair pratfall.

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Film Preview: Death and Desire at the Circus — “Varieté” at the Coolidge Corner Theatre

April 26, 2016
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Varieté will be the tenth score composed by a Sheldon Mirowitz class and played by the Berklee Silent Film Orchestra.

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Film Review: Acknowledging Jean Epstein — Brilliant Maverick Filmmaker and Critic

January 29, 2016
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Jean Epstein’s body of work is full of pleasures and surprises: this vigorous director broke ground for filmmakers and cinematic movements to come.

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Fuse News Film Review: “Blancanieves” — Silent Film Redux

April 18, 2013
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“Blancanieves” is not quite as charming as “The Artist,” but it’s less of a parlor trick, more sincerely a work of true silent cinema, 85 years after the dawn of sound.

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Silent Film Feature: Soviet Masterpiece “Battleship Potemkin” Steams into Town with a New Score

December 14, 2011
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As the Occupy and Tea Party movements attest, this is a time in America of social action and political upheaval -– not to the degree that we see in “Battleship Potemkin,” but significant nonetheless –- and this classic silent film has resonance today in that regard.

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Short Fuse Movie Review: “Hugo” Triumphant

December 6, 2011
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I had written Martin Scorsese off, and never expected he had a “Hugo” in him. That he did is the among the touching things in this film.

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Film Feature: Nathan the Wise — A Silent Film for Humanity

August 24, 2011
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Thought to be lost, the only existing print of NATHAN THE WISE was discovered in Moscow in 1996. The Coolidge Corner Theater is screening a tinted and beautifully restored version of the film, with an original score by Aaron Trant performed live by the After Quartet.

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Movie Feature: Making Music for the “It” Girl

April 23, 2011
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It is really very much of its time and place, its particular moment in history. The social revolution of the 20s, the new freedoms for “modern” women, the flapper phenomenon, and the challenges to the class structure in urban 20th century America are among the issues in this 1927 silent comedy. By Bill Marx The…

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