Birds Eye View – Sound & Silents

One of the highlights to this year’s WOW – Women Of The World festival at the Southbank Centre, in association with International Women’s Day, was Birds Eye View’s Sound and Silents. Which included specially commissioned live scores by cutting-edge female musicians alongside seminal silent films by women pioneering gothic, surreal and horror cinema.

Lotte Reiniger’s 1955 ‘Hansel and Gretel’ animation was for me, one of the two Sound and Silents highlights. Beautifully cut silhouettes and shadows with creepy motion and movement were accompanied by Micachu’s even more disturbing sounds of screechy rubber and twisting notes giving the animation a much more intense feeling of the macabre, highlighting the grim tale. Those of you not familiar with Lotte Reiniger should definitely check out her work.

Maya Deren’s 1943 ‘Meshes of The Afternoon’ is one of her (and her husband Alexander Hammid) most experimental and dream-like films. Full of symbology, it was beautifully and rhythmically accompanied by Seaming. As a modern sound track to the the film, this is one of the most fitting scores to the nature of the film, varying in pace, responding to movement, the score ended intensely towards the end with Seaming’s vocals and sound clashes.

For the the 1913 ‘Suspense’ by Lois Weber we saw Tara Busch’s performance almost over shadow the one-reel silent thriller. Despite both being brilliant, one could only watch one or the other as Busch’s performance was so enigmatic and layered, you couldn’t take your eyes off her multi-instrumental handy work.

The final score and the second highlight was composed by Grammy award winner Imogen Heap. In the form of a capella sound track to Germaine Dulac’s 1928 ‘La Coquille et le Clergyman’, one of the first surrealist films ever made, it was boldly accompanied by beautiful and hugely haunting vocals lead by Heap and Holst Singers. The sad tale of a priest’s lusting hallucinations for a married woman were thoughtfully portrayed by the voices and harmonies. Heap’s score was brilliant, I even got goose bumps, revving up emotions of longing and forbidden thoughts.

Thanks to Birds Eye View, I became much more aware of the female film makers of the last century. Now a charity, co-founded by Rachel Millward in 2002, it aims to be a a positive response to the fact that only 7% of films are directed by women. It launched the first major UK festival of women film-makers in 2005 supporting and developing new talent as well as showcasing the female film makers throughout the decades.

Review by Alicja McCarthy

The Birds Eye View Festival runs until March 17th and for more information, visit www.birds-eye-view.co.uk
For more events at the Southbank Centre, visit www.southbankcentre.co.uk

More by me on FAD - http://www.fadwebsite.com/2011/03/15/birds-eye-view-sound-silents/

Photographs thanks to Sophia Schorr-Kon