The magic of silent cinema and music are coming together again this September as part of the second annual Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre Silent Film Festival in Moscow. Throughout the month, the festival is set to show a variety of classic films from the 1920s, each with a new score created by local composers. The festival is something that Kenworthy Executive Director Colin Mannex hopes will continue to create a renewed sense of engagement with past films by putting them in conversation with modern compositions.
"It's an opportunity for us to make the case that the interpretation of these films is not a settled matter," Mannex says. "It's not stuffy or antiquated. In fact, these are really lively works that are maybe in a different cinematic vocabulary than what we appreciate now from movies, but they are no less complex in the study of human emotion and the human experience."
The festival spans many cinematic and musical genres. Things begin on Sept. 4 with the romance Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans featuring a composition by Isabella Morrill performed by the Washington-Idaho Symphony. The mystery The Unknown with a jazz score by Max Wolpert arrives Sept. 11. The horror feature A Page of Madness with benshi artist (a "movie talker") Ichiro Kataoka narrating alongside composer Dylan Champagne's cello score screens Sept. 19. And things conclude on Sept. 25 with the comedy Safety Last starring Harold Lloyd and featuring a percussion score by Liam Marchant.
For Marchant, who did a composition for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari at last year's inaugural festival, the opportunity to participate again was just as exciting. Taking on a comedy — and its own distinct wavelength — provided plenty of unique opportunities for him to play around.
"It's really just about heightening the comedy of it and working with some of the surface features in terms of motive and how you can use certain characters to express that motive ... utilizing the percussionists in a very idiomatic way," Marchant says. "I chose to go with more of a jagged, off-kilter beat to it kind of inspired by a lot of harmony you'd hear in ragtime, blues or more experimental areas of jazz. I think it's going to be really fun to work as more of a background soundscape for the film itself."
Marchant's process for finding his way into the composition involved watching the film multiple times and then playing through it with various instruments. He then reached out to other local collaborators he thought would similarly enjoy this unusual creative experience. Marchant said the end result — and those of the other composers — are something special.
"You're getting an absolutely beautiful creative landscape of the Pacific Northwest and the Palouse," he says. "Each night is going to be very different, so if you're looking for the whole experience, go to every show because you definitely won't be disappointed. There are really so many beautiful voices and dialogues that are happening with old pieces of film and old pieces of art."
Finding Marchant and other composers for the festival was easy for Mannex, since the region is home to many talented musicians he knew would be able to work their magic.
"We have this great reputation for being the heart of the arts here in North Idaho. We've got some really strong institutions with the Lionel Hampton School of Music [at UI] and the Washington-Idaho Symphony and just some really stellar independent people," Mannex says. "We've just been able to tap into that existing talent and solicit contributions from people that we know are qualified to be able to deliver."
Reflecting on how the Kenworthy itself was a silent theater nearly a century ago when it first opened, Mannex hopes to carry on this legacy for many years to come.
"We're able to draw from a lot of local history," he says. "Everything that would have gone on around the business of selling movies, we can bring back and bring people really close to that experience of what it was like to be in the cinema in 1926 while also demanding a reappraisal of some of those works with the new music that we're able to highlight."
Kenworthy Silent Film Festival • Sept. 4, 11, 19, 25 at 7 pm • $10-$15; $50 festival pass • All ages • Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre • 508 S. Main St., Moscow • kenworthy.org