By NOEL MURPHY
SILENT movies, in their day, were stunning new technology; arresting moving pictures, films that had audiences jumping from their seats as locomotives came toward them.
Pianos belting out crescendos set the mood, raised the alarm, took the foot off the throttle when need be. Today’s 3-D has nothing on the shock of the new that movies brought to a world entranced by a new technology in a new century.
Chaplin, Keaton, Pickford and a host of voiceless comics and tragedians entranced moviegoers and Hollywood’s rise in the coastal hills of California set the pace for a world that wouldn’t be tipped on its head with anything comparable until the internet almost a century later.
For all that movie-making technology has changed, its simplest premise remains its most popular – a good story well told.
Which is just what Seven Wonders Silent Film Festival, at Geelong’s National Wool Museum, is about: stories told through art films, animation, drama, comedy and documentaries. All are the work of aspiring and pro filmmakers, “vloggers”, YouTubers, artists, media students and schoolkids across the country and as far afield as New York and Puerto Rico.
Thirty silent movies, each under seven minutes’ duration, range across the imaginings of their makers. The subject matter includes a kinetic poem of the life and death of a sunbird, slapstick-inspired ways of catching baddies, a boy swallowing a five-cent piece, another who wakes up deaf and a woman spending a day playing as a kid.
It’s all about wonder, says the museum’s promotion.
“We may be familiar with the wonders of the ancient world, such as the Great Pyramids of Giza and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, or the wonders of the natural world such as the Great Barrier Reef and Mount Everest, but are we familiar with the everyday wonders of our lives?”
Works within the festival include such everyday wonders as the perils of over-eating, catching leaves, the streets of Kathmandu and landmarks of Geelong.
The evocative titles include Seven Wonders of Seven People, Chroma Mobile, Shed Bot, The Reservoir, 7 Veces, (Paint) and The Seventh of the Seventh.
According to the festival charter, storytelling through film is one of the most powerful ways of sharing ideas and experiences.
And, of course, with the popularity of smartphones and handheld media devices, with their ability to record and edit films, more people are using film to tell their stories.
Visitors to Seven Wonders will find more than just the films. A terrific showcase of stills from the movies adorn the gallery’s walls, together with a couple of stunning early-Geelong theatre images and some carefully selected thoughts gleaned from the silent flicks.
All the festival films are on the museum’s YouTube channel, with a public vote for the favourite on Facebook.
LINK: http://www.geelongaustralia.com.au/nwm/calendar/item/8d131042bb4dfb8.aspx
