Screen shot from Faust by Marnau
The Silents is Golden festival will be running all October at the Mayfair Theater. Films screenings include: Faust; Phantom of the Opera; The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari; Night of the Living Dead; Back to God’s Country; The Bear, The Boy and The Dog; The General; and Lelong:Dance of the Virgins… all of them to live musical scores! Check out our events calendar or the Mayfair Theatre’s website for dates and times!
There won’t be computer animated graphics or 3D glasses. Heck, there isn’t really any dialogue, but Silents is Golden, the silent film festival at the Mayfair Theatre has a lot more to offer than your local Cineplex. Classic silent films you watch while live musicians perform original scores; it’s movie night AND a concert in one! Life doesn’t get much better than this.
The event is the brain child of Mike Dubue, known to most readers as the lead singer of The Hilotrons.Turns out he’s also The Mayfair’s General Manager and Music Director, but first and foremost he’s a composer. That’s what this event is all about. All the films are being performed with original scores, and even though some of the films have been shown at the Mayfair before, these certainly aren’t just repeat performances.
“I treat these like workshops,” Mike told me over the telephone, “and I encourage everyone else to do the same.” Almost every previously played scored has been re-tweaked and re-worked; Mike, for example, has almost completely altered the score for Back to God’s Country and assures me it will be a new experience for everyone deciding to see it.
