"The Dream Factory" - a nickname for the Hollywoodland and the motto for this year's edition of Silent Movie Festival in Krakow captures well the festival's spirit.
The term "silent movie" might be considered bit misguided - the cinema never liked silence, the music was always there, long before the world understood how to capture the audio on the magnetic tape. And music was there to enhance, to translate, to follow or push the story.
The beauty of the silent movie phenomen is that they can have a new life through music. They can adapt to modern times and acquire new meanings or rather new means of expression. As the Hollywood's latest trend is to re-make and re-heat plenty of old movies, however there's no need and no way to re-do Charlie Chaplin's movie. But you can always change the musical context and create a new and unique experience.
I chose three festival screenings, and, in hindsight, I wished I had seen the entire program.
I recall listening to Jazz Band Ball Orchestra's LPs as a teenager, and their true-to-the-tradition renditions of jazz classics were fun and pleasure to listen to. The JBBO was assembled over half a century ago by Jan Kudyk who's still in charge.
The orchestra played to "Mania : A history of a cigarette factory worker" featuring Pola Negri, a story not unlike the one presented much more recently in the cinema by Buz Luhrmann in "Moulin Rouge" and are many more examples to enlist. A young and beatifull factory worker Mania, played by Negri, falls madly in love with a talented composer, but is also courted by the factory's owner, who happens to be the opera's main sponsor, and as such holds the key to the composer's future. It's a story of romance, devotion and betrayal.
Jazz Band Ball's music fit perfectly the ballroom scenes, filled with dances and the discreet charm of burgeiosie. Jazz Band Ball Orchestra might sound like a true Second Line, in fact they joyfully travelled from Dixieland to swing and (for the dramatic finale) sharp post-bop chords.
