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A partnership between artists Roberto Freitas and O Grivo.

The project creates live music for silent old movies from the beginning of the 20th century.

There are two programs, a feature film and a collection of short films.

 

Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens - F. W. Murnau - 01'34" - 1922

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Emak bakia - Man Ray - 16’’ - 1926

Anemic Cinema - Marcel Duchamp - 6” - 1926

Entr’act - Renne Clair - 20’’19’

Rhythmus 21 -  Hans Richter - 3 - 1921 

The Hearts of Age:  - Orson Welles - 8” - 1934

 

 

 

For each film there is a research of possibilities for track / film dialogue . 

 

Sometimes the entire soundtrack is constructed on the border between music and sound design; other times it creates only a musical atmosphere that dialogues with the film as if remotely, leaving aside any need for sonoplastic synchrony, etc.

 

Sometimes the soundtrack works in harmony with the film with respect to its setting, theme, etc. Sometimes, when the films invite a freer approach, there is the construction of structures whose articulation does not require a didactic or traditional progression based on continuity.

In both cases, the proposals are made up of musical materials that are different in terms of timbre, rhythmic characteristics, etc.; and also in terms of the strategies of dialog between the musicians.

 

Often musical structures are created that are capable of forging environments that have analogical relations with reality:

city / country / factory / park / etc

 

The "reading" of the film takes place from two distinct angles:

   1 - the film as a score - the same sounds and forms for the same images; 2 - the film as an invitation to improvisation.

In the case of the option for a freer dialogue with the film, the dialogue strategy moves in the direction of a more attentive look at the formal aspects of the works, to the detriment of the psychological character of each film.
It is also important to work with editing parameters common to the cinema of this time and to "New Music": 

 

The instrumentation used for musical performance is very varied. A series of traditional instruments are used (percussion, woodwind, strings, etc); various everyday objects that produce sound; sound machines; and also various electronic instruments.

 

This set of instruments creates a third layer of information next to the films and the soundtrack. In this way the audience also follows the movements of the musicians in their acts of sound production.

 

All this makes the show extremely alive. As if the film overflowed the screen, triggering musicians, instruments, and objects.

 

Some concepts/ideas of Jean Epstein and Dziga Vertov, filmmakers whose works are fundamental to the development of cinema, since the silent period, guide the construction of this musical dialogue.