Silent film meets Satie

A WORLD first musical performance and lecture about classic silent cinematic movie The Passion of Joan of Arc will be a closing highlight of this year’s Ballarat International Foto Biennale.

Hosted by Federation University’s Arts Academy and Future Regions Research Centre, the film will be accompanied by a score with music by French composer Erik Satie and adapted for the screening by Arts Academy director Professor Richard Chew.

Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc portrays the final days of the trial of Joan of Arc with inspiration taken from the real transcripts.

The screening will include gothic-inspired music with Professor Chew on piano, soprano Kate MacFarlane, the Vox Chamber Choir, organist Rhys Boak, Varvara Vakhrameeva on violin and cellist Lachlan Dent.

“By intertwining Satie’s ethereal and mystical music of the 1890s with this cinematic masterpiece, we are creating a unique dialogue between sound and image that has never been explored before,” Dr Chew said.

“The magnificent Fincham pipe organ we will hear in this performance was installed in 1892, exactly when Satie was writing this music.

“By turns surreal, intense and deeply moving, the film continues to shock and amaze.”

Professor Steven Adams who is visiting from the University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom, will host a lecture about the film’s significance and which will also include a music performance.

“For nearly a century, Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc has been praised as one of the most visually innovative films ever made,” Dr Adams said.

“Indeed, as the noted Dreyer fan Jean-Luc Goddard observed, ‘this silent film has to be one in which sound has a palpable impact.’

“Paired with a specially curated score composed of Satie’s haunting and mystical music, this performance invites us to consider the film in a completely new light.”

The free lecture will be held from 6pm on Saturday 18 October at the Post Office Theatre while the film screening will occur on Sunday 19 October from 7.30pm at Ballarat Performing Arts Centre.

To purchase tickets to the performance, visit the BIFB website.