Sound & Silents: Mary Pickford Revived I

LIVE MUSIC TO SILENT FILM

Fri 9 March, 8pm Purcell Room, Southbank Centre
Tickets and information: www.southbankcentre.co.uk  0844 875 0073

Birds Eye View has commissioned four cutting-edge female musicians to write and perform new live scores to a range of Mary Pickford’s most visionary and entertaining work. Three short films are featured in this event; see below.

The fourth will be the stunning film Sparrows accompanied by the musical brilliance of Aristazabel Hawkes (of Guillemots fame). Click here for more details.

In partnership with the Southbank Centre’s Women Of The World festival.

This work was supported with funds from the PRS for Music Foundation.Films curated by Kelly Robinson.

 

  • Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley

    Plus live score from Welsh/Iranian folk fusion singer songwriter Roshi

    US 1918. Dir Marshall Neilan, 67Min. Feisty Amarilly (Pickford) lives in a working class district with her contented but poor family. She is adored by her boyfriend Terry but their relationship is tested when she meets a flighty artist and is introduced to high society. Amarilly was adapted by Frances Marion, Pickford’s life long friend and ‘official scenarioist’. Marion was the most prolific and highest paid scriptwriter of the time. Through her titles she provides an explicit social commentary and criticism of the upper classes. Indeed Pickford and Marion did much to bring working class audiences into the cinema.

    Plus live score from Welsh/Iranian folk fusion singer songwriter Roshi:
    “Exceptional” - New Internationalist Magazine

  • The New York Hat

    Plus live score from classical/electronic composer Anna Meredith

    US 1912. Dir D. W. Griffith. Small town bigotry is revealed in this tragicomic film starring a luminous Pickford. When a priest (Lionel Barrymore) buys a new hat for a recently bereaved girl (Pickford), he is mistakenly believed to be courting her. This delightful Biograph short shows how, even at this early period of filmmaking, sensitive direction and nuanced performance could combine to reveal a character’s inner life.

    Plus live score from Anna Meredith, one of the UK’s most in-demand young composers of electronic/contemporary classical work:
    "In the sedate classical world she’s a blast of fresh air" - The Times

  • The Female of the Species

    Plus live score from British/Canadian/Rwandan experimental pop multi-instrumentalist Tanya Auclair

    US 1912. Dir D. W. Griffith. Four survivors of a deserted mining camp head for the desert. A woman, encouraged by her sister, becomes suspicious that another woman has designs on her injured husband. When he dies their loneliness and paranoia, encouraged by the arid, windy landscape, lead to murderous intentions. See Pickford here in wicked Machiavellian guise.

    Plus live score from British/Canadian/Rwandan experimental pop multi-instrumentalist Tanya Auclair:
    “Gobsmacking!" - Tom Robinson, BBC Radio 6