East End Film Festival – A Symphony of Horror at Spitalfields

Music in motion: MINIMA

According to the website Silent London, there is a screening of a silent film in London at least once a week. More often than not there are two or three. From the BFI to music halls, trade union clubs and disused petrol stations, they have been happening in all sorts of places that span the established to the quainter fringes, by way of guerilla-style pop-up initiatives.

One of the reasons silent films are so well-suited to the recent trend for immersive cinema is that the genre relies on movie-watching as a public event. Traditionally, silent film demands live musical accompaniment. So where you find silent film, you will hopefully find live music as well.

MINIMA is a band that composes original scores for silent films. This Saturday (7 July) they are performing at The East End Film Festival. The festival has commissioned a unique cross-platform collaboration between artists and musicians that centres around the screening of a silent classic: the 1922 film Nosferatu.

Billed as ‘A Symphony of Horror’, the event will see Spitalfields Market transformed in an ambitious attempt to evoke the shadowy, unsettling world of the blood-sucking Count Orlock, the movie’s dark protagonist.

The Citizen met up with MINIMA drummer Mick Frangou to find out more about the performance, future projects and the state of silent film.

HC: What can the audience expect from A Symphony of Horror?

MF: It’s going to be amazing. A screen is going to span the entire length of the market. We’re working with Paul Ayres Queldryk Ensemble, so there’s going to be a choir of sixty people performing with us. The artist Lucy Jones has been working on creating a gothic ambience and it starts after sunset so as the movie progresses it will be getting darker and darker. It’s going to be incredibly creepy.

HC: Tell me a bit about the music you have composed for Nosferatu.

MF: Well we’ve got drums, cello, guitar and baritone bass guitar, and we fuse everything from rare groove funk, to ambient avante-garde,  jazz, drum and bass and even a tango! And that’s all within a five minute scene! We mix up contemporary stuff with neo-classical styles, so it’s very modern even though what we’re actually doing – live musical accompaniment – is extremely traditional. It’s just back then it would have been a solo piano.

HC: Why did you decide to start writing and performing music for silent film?

MF: Alex (another band member) got in touch with me about playing accompaniment for silent film. I hadn’t done it before, I’d been playing in indie bands, but I remembered a time as an art student when I’d seen these really interesting audio visual performances by the London Film Makers Co-operative.  There was live psychedelic music accompanying the screenings and I remember thinking I’d like to do something like that, so when Alex mentioned it I got really excited.

HC: Have your ideas about silent film changed since working in the group?

MF: I didn’t know much about silent film when I was younger. I basically thought that all silent film was comedy – Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, things like that. Now I’m aware of people like Viking Eggeling, Lotte Reiniger and all sorts of avant-garde silent film-makers. Many of them cross all different genres – stop motion, melodrama, puppetry. The first film we did the score to was The Seashell and Clergyman, a pretty surreal forty minute film from 1928 by Germaine Dulac , one of the first female film makers.

HC: Do you think that more immersive cinema experiences are getting more popular? If so, why is that?

MF: Yes, I think we’re in the zeitgeist. These kinds of immersive events have been happening for the last few years and finding new young audiences. I think people are getting bored of bland, predictable blockbusters. Our audiences are looking for something else. The demographic is very eclectic. We do what’s basically a residency at the Prince Charles Cinema and a lot of the audience are very young, as well as your older, veteran silent film fans.

 HC: How does live musical accompaniment change the experience of watching a film?

MF: With live accompaniment you get this three dimensional effect, an edginess – there’s something going on between the film and the music. The sound resonates and bounces in the space, and so there’s this movement, a kind of third level that’s created. That’s is how it would have been with live piano too.

Without sounding pretentious, it’s something like a sound sculpture – the sound becomes tactile. You don’t get that with a backing track, or laptop, and surround sound just isn’t quite the same.

HC: What’s one of the most interesting things you’ve learnt from doing this kind of performing?

MF: Well I’ve got this instrument with a very silly name, it’s called a ‘Swish Knocker’ – something to do with it having these rivets and you knocking time on it – anyway it makes this dark shimmer or sizzle sound. And I use this same sound for lots of different effects – to evoke wind or fog, the splash of a body being thrown off a ship, even a gunshot. And it works for the audience in all these contexts. The mind’s amazing – it does so much of the work, it adapts the sound if you like, and accepts it.  That’s incredible.

 HC: You’re performing for a classic horror film. How did that come about? Is the genre particularly suited to your kind of music?

MF: It’s the way it happened. The second film we ever played to was a commission by the Wellcome Trust.  They were doing an exhibition about nightmares and sleep. They contacted us and suggested we did something for a film called The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, which is about a somnambulist, a sleepwalker. It’s a very dark film. So we ended up doing that, and we’ve of refined ourselves at that kind of genre. I suppose we stumbled into horror, by way of surrealism! We’re very good with minor chords.

 HC: Has anything ever gone wrong at a live performance?

MF: There was one time when a film we were accompanying was being shown on DVD, and the disc kept jumping. We knew the music inside out so every time it jumped we’d look at each other and try and to predict where it was going, and catch the film in the right place. But it would jump again, every few minutes. So the music was literally racing with the film! We were having to improvise and make the music fit as we were going along. The audience thought it was all part of the performance.

HC: What would you like to do in the future?

MF: I’d love for us to do something at Wilton’s Music Hall, it’s an amazing theatre in the east end. Or a car park somewhere – do a drive-thru kind of thing.

We’d also love to do an original score for Phantom of the Opera. I’ve had this theme going round in my head for years that I think could work really well with it.

 HC: You’ve been working with East End Film Festival for some years.  How important is that relationship?

MF: It’s in the east end of London for a start, it’s my manor! And they have this right on attitude that I really like. They’re not overtly political but in the sense that they’re for the community, I suppose they are to the left. They’re committed to showcasing emerging filmmakers which is really important and they strive to do really exciting, varied things. They’re getting bigger and bigger and they’ve got this real kudos, but they’re not up their own arses. They’re really cool, and extremely supportive. I’m chuffed to be part of it.

 HC: Lastly, is it strange performing to an audience whose attention is not on you?

MF: It’s certainly not an ego trip gig when you’re accompanying silent films. You can’t cock your leg up on a monitor with no pants on and strut your stuff. You’re in the dark most of the time. If a lot of the audience looks over simultaneously that’s not a good thing. But I love it. We always say the film is King. If you forget that then you’re not doing your job.

To find out more about The East End Film Festival go to the East End Film Festival.

 To find out more about MINIMA go to Minima Music.