Silence, exile and cunning

Not just the weapons of choice for Stephen Dedalus in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, those three words could also be the motto for musicians who go about orchestrating the International Silent Film Festival, which recently finished its run at the Shangri-La Plaza Cineplex.

Mirroring is one of our early learning tools, say psychologists: babies learn to grip, stand, throw by watching others do the same; in the dating world, it’s said we adults mirror the body language of those we’re attracted to. But how do you mirror a movie that’s 80 to 100 years old, filling the gap of silence with the appropriate sounds?

It’s always been kind of weird for me to watch movies from a century ago. It’s like staring into a time machine, or flipping through somebody else’s baby pictures. There’s an intimacy in such artifacts that can be discomforting. This is the fourth edition of Manila’s Silent Film Festival, so we’re long past the Nosferatu/Metropolis/Cabinet of Dr. Caligari stage — classics already familiar to film students. We’re now into the obscurities. But the music still has to carefully reflect the silence and celluloid shown onscreen. This year the festival welcomed four films — from Germany, Spain, Japan and Italy — mirrored by live performances from Out of Body Special, Tanglaw, Radioactive Sago Project and Caliph8, respectively. Italy’s Ambassador Luca Fornari, present with his wife Silvana, welcomed the opening film, a silent melodrama from 1914 called Assunta Spina. One of the nice things about silent film is that, aside from the occasional title card, you’re pretty much left to infer what’s going on, psychologically, from the facial expressions and gestures of the actors. The lead actress, Francesca Bertini, whose eyebrows are badly in need of plucking, manages to convey petulance, mostly, and her signature move — grabbing a chair and planting herself in it impatiently — tells us she’s about as high-maintenance as Britney Spears on tour. In the story, she’s got two suitors and can’t choose one; she keeps making goo-goo eyes at both of them; then her face ends up getting slashed by one jealous suitor; he goes to jail; yadda, yadda, yadda… did we mention there’s music to go along with this?

Caliph8 are probably uniquely suited to handle the soundscape demands of silent film. Leader Arvin Nogueras told us in his intro remarks to Assunta Spina that, aside from sampling tons of vintage vinyl to construct a platform of sound over which he and his cohorts improvise, he was influenced by experimental Italian composer Luciano Berio. One heard traces of Spaghetti Western Morricone in the guitar figurings of Kakoy Legaspi too, as well as excellent patches of drum and bass grooving, interrupted by abstract bursts meant to “mirror” the psychological turmoil of the actors on the screen. Phew, that’s a tall order, bringing order to the silent gestures of gesticulating Italians. But Caliph8 has done this sort of thing before, having scored the “epic Italian silent film” La Cabiria with Matt Deegan on upright bass and Malek Lopez on synthesizers, as well as dropping in various snaps, crackles and pops to accompany German films like The Golem and Metropolis in other collaborations.

Caliph8’s music could easily stand alone here, with or without the Italian visuals. Nogueras and company have plenty of tricks up their sleeves, with II Primitivo helping on sampler/drum machine, Minister Zero on “electro-acoustic manipulation” and Khavn De La Cruz jazzing things up on keyboards. Traces of ‘60s soundtracks, psychedelic music, kraut rock, hip-hop and atonality bump and merge in the air, sometimes helping us understand what’s going on, other times over-emoting along with the actors. A herd of laptops aids in synching to the score, over which the musicians drop a collage of sonic events.

The festival, by the way, is free of charge, and seats are first come, first served. As there was a quite visible “VIP” section roped off in the center of the Cineplex, we couldn’t help noticing, about 40 minutes into Assunta Spina, the gentle sound of VIPs softly snoring, like a chorus of chainsaws ripping through pine in deep forests. Who said this was a “silent” film?

Before Japan Foundation of Manila director Ben Suzuki announced the second film, Japan’s entry to the festival, he noted the absence of Filipino silent films in our midst. Where have they all gone, he remarked? One wag in the audience piped up, “You burned them all during the Occupation.” Ouch. The outgoing Suzuki ends his five-year stay in Manila with a great sense of “utang na loob” — perhaps partially repaid by treating the Festival audience to a brisk slapstick comedy from 1930s Japan, Kodakara Sodo (Kid Commotion), backed by Radioactive Sago Project. It was a good way to send the audience out laughing, with silent film star Shigeru Ogura, Japan’s version of Charlie Chaplin, frantically tending to a wife who’s gone into labor. Lourd De Veyra and crew launched into fairly straightforward John Zorn territory (if such a description is possible) with a lead jazz theme, before giving way to comical bursts of mischief onstage. Unlike Caliph8, you can see lead sheets turning on music stands onstage when Radioactive Sago play, as they get to brandish their peculiar and dazzling skills, mirroring a short feature that involves midwives, runaway pigs and the like. No vocals in this mix, though De Veyra “conducts,” Francis de Veyra plays bass, Arwin Nava and Jay Gapasin serve up percussion, Pards Tupas, Wowie Anzano, Rastem Eugenio, Ryan Zapanta add lots of horny things, and Junji Lerma goes through a paintbox of sounds on guitar — delving into comic interludes, heavy metal, punk, jazz and ambient instrumental. Musicians like this can mirror whatever they like, clearly.

As the festival organizers (including the Goethe Institut, Instituto Cervantes, the French Embassy, the Italian Embassy and Japan Foundation) like to point out, silent films were never intended to be viewed in silence: even in the old days, orchestras or piano players were hired to accompany the action on the flickering screen. So getting the likes of Radioactive Sago and Caliph8 to soundtrack these unearthed flakes of history is much like, say, doing a super-cool remix of an old Billy Holliday track: something old, something borrowed, mixed up into something new. Alchemy is a by-product of chemical imbalance, after all. At least in the right hands.