Pittsburgh City Paper: Everyone, from writers to high-powered studio executives, has been trying to answer the question: How do we bring people back to the movies? The answer has often turned to going bigger and grander, with special effects and superheroes being thrown at the audience from every direction.
5 comments:
I love old movies, I have seen just as much as my streaming services has allowed me. Obviously I have not tapped the full potential of the cinema universe, particularly in regards to movies that date before the eighties, and those especially before the 40’s. The idea of a film festival that not only shows old films, but silent films is really exciting. It is quite literally a lost art, and I don't think a major silent film has been released since humans figured out how to add sound to their movies. I think the best way to know what new ways you can lead your art is to know where it started. I didn’t even know that “Pittsburgh silent film society” was a thing. LEt alone a festival devoted to these screenings. I will definitely attempt to get a ticket, I love older work and I can’t wait to expand my repertoire and my library of knowledge I can pull from when I begin to design my own work.
Growing up, I’ve never seen a silent film – it’s just something that our generation isn’t exposed to. But I think that it is still an art form and that there’ll always be this layer of appreciation (for the lack of a better word) there, for being the pioneer of modern moving pictures. We emphasise so much on provoking and engaging all senses now that there are even 4DX cinemas that allow you to feel movement and tactile senses when watching a movie. I think there is also a desensitisation of a lot of things, such as explosions because we see them in so many movies all the time. So there is a demand to make movies with bigger explosions and louder noises. The article mentions a significant number of silent films have been lost, and I think that’s a shame because if we don’t take action to preserve these films, they will completely disappear as if they were never here.
It is so wonderful to see how passionate people can get about the history of what they love. Knowing that Hunter cares so much about silent films showcases what true love is. I sometimes wonder what our future will look like since all of the technological advances that have happened in the past 10 years but it never occurred to me that we had to look in the past to inspire us all. Looking back and experiencing life how the generations before us did is so breathtaking. Before coming to school in Pittsburgh I did not realize how much people value the theater in the city. It is beautiful to see the community come together and enjoy such a variety of art. I have never seen a silent film in a theater since it has never been available to me or I was just unaware of it. I think it is such a great opportunity to look back at the art of silent films and maybe even learn new things.
I love this initiative, and how many people are engaging in this–personally I’d love to go to one of these showings! It’s so interesting and cool that Hunter is an archivist, and that lead to his work in creating these showing opportunities. Especially more than modern movies, old film was meant for the big screen, not to be watched on a small laptop or someone’s iPhone. So I believe the experience of watching them they way they were meant to be portrayed must have such an informative and exciting effect on viewers. It’s insane that “75% are lost,” our society has been moving so fast, it really wan’t to long ago when silent films were the only films available, around only 100 years ago. So that really makes me think about how we’re preserving our history, as in the moment they don’t think about it as history really, and yet now relics and snapshots of the past are so precious. I would love to watch silent films, I think there’s so much we could learn, especially going into the entertainment industry, as this was their start in film, which obviously has grown so much since then, but also maybe we have a lot we need to learn from them. Currently there are many remakes being made, and at one of the most exciting creative times there is also a large lack of new ideas arising. It makes perfect sense, as it does often seem like any idea you think of is derivative of other media- I myself often think of this when thinking of designing in the future. However when they were making silent films, nobody had done that before. It was so incredibly new, and so they had so many possibilities to explore. It makes me think about now, what is our ‘new medium’ or exploratory area? Is it AI? That seems to be coming up the most in discussion, especially with the strikes at the moment. Are there other technologies that we should/could be exploring? Or should we take a step back, watch some silent films, and think about pausing the cgi for more “traditional” and tangible methods again.
Do silent films sell out because the people of Pittsburgh like them, or do they sell out because of their novelty? If all of the movies shown in Pittsburgh were silent, black and white films, I’m not sure that it would hold people’s attention in today’s attention deficit world. A lot of movies produced today are quickly forgotten by the dustbin of society’s tastes. In the article, it says only 25% of silent films still remain, because like Chad Hunter said “some were just thought to not be worth preserving.” This begs the question: how many of our current films will still hold up under scrutiny, be relevant to the peoples of the future, and therefore be preserved. I wonder how the advent of the internet will affect its longevity as well; will digital media be preserved forever, or will it still be subject to the whims and tastes of the society in which it's set in.
Post a Comment