Tom Verlaine: Music for Film

viewed sometime in April 21, 2000 at the Castro

A description of the program in total can be found here.

My first event at the 43rd annual Film Festival was a combined screening and concert featuring several rarely-screened silent film shorts set to the live scoring of punk guitarist Tom Verlaine.  Verlaine's work in the '70s with the band Television remains one of my favorite rock guitar performances (I highly recommend the eponymous debut album, featuring great tracks like "Venus" and "See No Evil").  Tonight, 25 years removed from those glory days, his music ranged from banal to exciting and mostly plodding.  But the films were beautiful.  

Almost all of the seven shorts featured were filmed in the '20s. (The only exception was a '40s driver's safety film by Carl Dreyer that seems to be at cross-purposes, enthralled by the experience of speed-driving it ostensibly seeks to condemn).  Combined, they give an effective sampling of the dominant artistic styles of the era: surrealism, cubism, expressionism.  Artists like Man Ray and Fernand Leger are marquis names to the program, but my favorites were "Fall of the House of Usher" a haunting rendition of Poe's story by Dr. James Sibley Watson; and "Autumn Mist" by Dimitri Kirsanoff, a visual poem to a woman's face, one of the most beautiful faces I have ever seen.  I'm going to have to look for that one again.

A description of the program in total can be found here.

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