Jul 26, 2012 | No Comments | ByBirds Eye View
It’s official! Birds Eye View will be returning to Latitude 2012 as part of the much loved Sound & Silents programme. This year we’ll be bringing you Sparrows (1926) from the screen icon and movie mogul Mary Pickford. Read the full story
Feb 21, 2012 | No Comments | ByBirds Eye View
Tanya Auclair and Aristazabal Hawkes are playing not once but twice at our Sound and Silents: Mary Pickford Revived event this March. Aristazabal is helping Tanya out with her score of Mary Pickford melodrama The Female of the Species at the Southbank Centre on March 9th and Tanya is returning the favour, assisting Aristazabal’s score of feature length silent classic Sparrows at the Hackney Picturehouse on March 11th.
We spoke to the ladies about their adventures in cinematic scores and their dream soundtracks. Read the full story
Feb 17, 2012 | No Comments | ByBirds Eye View
Kelly Robinson, our silent film program curator, waxes lyrical on Mary Pickford’s ability to provide both quantity and quality of cinema and gives us a bit of insight into her film selections for Mary Pickford Revived.
In any serious study of early cinema, prominent male figures such as the ‘Father of Film’ D.W. Griffith and silent clown Charles Chaplin are always first to feature. Happily though, recent literature has sought to readdress this critical gender imbalance by also highlighting the contribution of similarly extraordinary pioneers like Mary Pickford.
Feb 13, 2012 | No Comments | ByBirds Eye View
Kelly Robinson curates the Birds Eye View silent film programmes. Here she celebrates the current surge of interest in silent film with the success of The Artist, and reflects on the phenomenal impact of women like Mary Pickford on the history of cinema:
So it’s black and white, the screen size has been reduced to something fitting for the 1930s and it is oh so quiet (at least as far as dialogue is concerned). And yet Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist has swept the BAFTAs and is likely to take the Oscars by storm next month. Let’s hope that the buzz around this film will encourage newcomers to silent film to seek out silents from the past; and not to presume that The Artist is enjoyable because it was made in the present. For what makes the Artist so magnificent is how like old silent films it is; how it uses film as a visually expressive medium equally beautifully.
Over several years now, Birds Eye View have been screening some of the best of these original silent films and in doing so have been successfully expanding audiences for this sublime art form. Our Sound & Silents strand now reaches audiences in London and across the UK, each year demonstrating that silent film is no longer the preserve of a privileged few. Read the full story
Jan 6, 2012 | Comments Off | ByEmily Seed
WOW @ South Bank Centre, March 2012
Happy New Year to the BEV family and supporters! We hope this finds you well-fed, well-rested and well-entertained over the hols, and with a spring in your step for 2012.
We have hot-off-the-press BEV news for you, read on friends! Read the full story
Mar 15, 2011 | 4 Comments | ByLouise Forbes
Imogen Heap DVD
We’ve been blown away by the response to our Sound and Silents extravaganza on Friday night at Southbank Centre – and if you were there we’d love to know what you think too! We have a copy of Imogen’s new DVD Everything In-Between – The Story of Ellipse to be won for the best review: all you have to do is tell us what you thought about the Sound & Silents performance in the Comments box below (or post a link to a piece on your blog) by Friday 25th March. We’ll then put the names of the commentators in a hat, and one will win a copy of the DVD!
Everything In-Between – The Story of Ellipse goes behind the scenes and explores Imogen’s three year journey to make Grammy Award winning album, Ellipse, including her writing and recording process and the building of her recording studio. Find out how she creates the unique sounds of her album from dismantaling pianos to evening birds in the woods (and including a clip of her performance from Birds Eye View Film Festival 2008).
