Not So Silent Cinema

Live Music. Classic Silent Film.

Not So Silent Cinema composes and performs new, original scores for classic silent film.

Nosferatu at the Mutter Museum
Oct
30
7:00 PM19:00

Nosferatu at the Mutter Museum

http://muttermuseum.org/events/not-so-silent-cinema-presents-nosferatu/

Join us for a screening of F.W. Murnau's chilling German Expressionist masterpiece, Nosferatu, complete with a live score from Not So Silent Cinema.

As one of the silent film era's most influential films, Nosferatu's dark, brooding mood, masterful cinematography, and ghastly vampire ghoul, continue to frighten audiences today and set the standard for all horror films that followed it. 

In tandem with our new exhibition, Spit Spreads Death, the film will be paired with a brief introductory lecture on the use of horror as a metaphor for pestilence. 

Mütter Museum admission is included in the ticket price and the museum will be open from 5:30-6:30, as well as a cash bar and complimentary pretzels upstairs. The lecture and film screening will begin promptly at 6:40 and no one will be admitted past that point. Costumes are highly encouraged!

Timeline:
5:30PM-6:30PM Reception/Museum Open
6:40PM-9:15PM Program (Lecture and Screening)

Please note that this event frequently sells out. Purchase your ticket ahead of time online to avoid missing out!

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Buster Keaton Shorts at Newtown Theatre
May
5
7:00 PM19:00

Buster Keaton Shorts at Newtown Theatre

Classic Buster Keaton Films. Live Musical Accompaniment

Stumbling through shooting galleries, trains, secret societies, and falling houses, Buster Keaton delivers outrageous stunts and antics (all with the famous deadpan delivery that earned him the nickname “The Great Stone Face”) in a program of classic comedic shorts accompanied by live music.

Enjoy these films along with Brendan Cooney’s new original scores, complementing the films with a classic 1920’s urban-Americana soundscape, combining many strands of American roots music. Ragtime and old-time meet the blues, bluegrass and hot jazz, played live by a talented trio of musicians.

Not So Silent Cinema (NSSC) has been performing new original music to classic silent film for over a decade. NSSC’s director, Brendan Cooney, composes new scores for each film, and selects some of his favorite musicians to join him on stage. This film features musicians from his chamber music group the New River Ensemble: clarinetist Martha Hyde, a veteran of NYC Broadway pit orchestras, and cellist Lisa Liske, who hails from southern Virginia.

ORDER TICKETS EARLY TO BE SURE YOU GET A SEAT!!

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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at the Mutter
Apr
25
6:30 PM18:30

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at the Mutter

Based on Robert Louis Stevenson's novella and starring famed stage and screen actor John Barrymore, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde examines the duality of human nature and the ethics of medical experimentation and features an astounding on-screen transformation. 


The film will be paired with a brief introductory lecture on ethics and experimentation in medicine.


Mütter Museum admission is included in the ticket price and the museum will be open from 5:30-6:30, as well as a cash bar and complimentary pretzels upstairs. The lecture and film screening will begin promptly at 6:45 and no one will be admitted past that point.


Timeline:
5:30PM-6:30PM Reception/Museum Open
6:45PM-8:45PM Program (Lecture and Screening)


About the Speaker

Jeffrey Womack earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of Houston in 2016 and is currently a post-doctoral lecturer in the University of Pennsylvania’s Health and Societies program. His publications include an article on “Nuclear Weapons, Dystopian Deserts, and Science Fiction Cinema,” in Vulcan: The International Journal of the Social History of Military Technology 1, No. 1 (2013; Bart Hacker, editor), and the College of Physicians of Philadelphia Historical Medical Library’s digital exhibit, “Healing Energy: Radium in America.” Dr. Womack’s book, Uncertainty Medicine: Radiation Therapy, 1895-1925, will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2020.


About Not So Silent Cinema

Not So Silent Cinema is the project of Philadelphia composer Brendan Cooney. Cooney pulls together different groups for each of his film projects, creating diverse mash-ups of musical personalities from different music scenes to create lively new platforms for interaction and creativity. His scores are tightly composed, time-coded and thematic but also have plenty of room for improvisation and interaction between players.


Tickets are transferable, but not refundable.

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Chaplin Shorts- Bucks County Playhouse
Apr
8
2:00 PM14:00

Chaplin Shorts- Bucks County Playhouse

This program, featuring several short films Chaplin made for Mutual Film Company between 1916-1917, The Adventurer, Pawnshop and The Cure. The score is a irreverent mashup of classical and jazz idioms performed by Martha Hyde on clarinet, Carlos Santiago on violin, and Brendan Cooney on piano.

 

Bucks County Playhouse

70 S. Main Street New Hope, PA 18938. Box Office: 215-862-2121

Tickets here.

chaplin adventurer 3.jpg
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Hitchcock Silents at the American Film Institute (Silver Springs)
Nov
10
9:30 PM21:30

Hitchcock Silents at the American Film Institute (Silver Springs)

Friday, November 10th, Not So Silent Cinema will be at the American Film Institute in Silver Springs, MD playing our two new scores to two of Hitchcock's early silent classics "The Lodger" and "Blackmail".  Brendan Cooney's original scores are for strings and piano.

7:30- The Lodger, a Story of the London Fog (1927)

9:30- Blackmail (1929)

See below for ticket links.

Lodger tickets

Blackmail tickets

 

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