Columbia College MFA Music Composition for
the Screen students accompanying silent films from the
late 19th/20th century $5 donation
THE ACTUALITY SHOW
Fundamentals of Cinema in Tracking Shots, Nature and
Kissing (1893 - 1905).
With live musical accompaniment by students of
Columbia College's MFA Music Composition for the
Screen program.
'Actuality film': the crude, unorganized footage of a
real place, event, thing, etc., generally referring to
the first decade of cinema's creation, when filmmakers
weren't filmmakers but "operators" who captured nature
and the modern world using hand-cranked cameras.
Hovering between the mundane (workers leaving a
factory) and the extraordinary (President McKinley
makes a personal appearance), these fragments often
reveal inadvertent truths about the manipulations
inherent to both documentary and fiction filmmaking.
Actualities are thought of as static, grainy, boring,
primitive (Gorky's "Kingdom of Shadows"); taking a
closer look, they contain the ambition of a modern
cinema that finds virtue in the simple observation of
the world's splendor (contemporary masters such as Hou
Hsiao-hsien and Abbas Kiarostami come to mind).
THE ACTUALITY SHOW takes a look at three phenomenon of
actualities from 1893- 1905: the invention of the
tracking shot by mounting cameras to trains and other
movable machinery; the unpredictable, astonishing
presence of nature and wildlife that found its way
into the early cinema frame as a testament to the
power of documentary; and the human kiss as an
electrifying presentiment of the potential of a new
art form to inspire love and change.
Original music composed and performed by:
Elon Arbiture
Jordan Balagot
Duncan Blickenstaff
Joseph Cooper
Mae Crosby
Andrew Edwards
Victor Hernandez-Sumpfhauser
Robert Ramos
Marjorie Rusche
Nathaniel Smith
Michelle Tyler
Program runs approximately 90 minutes with brief
pauses between films. DVD projection.
