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Soviet Silent Film with a Live Contemporary Score

By Violet Baron
Published September 14, 2022 at 6:13 PM EDT

Live scores to silent films may sound like a thing of the past. But in recent years, musicians have been composing new scores to reexamine older films in modern sonic and social contexts. This week, IU Cinema will screen the 1929 Soviet silent film Man with a Movie Camera, with a live score by the Austin, Texas-based group Montopolis. Producer Violet Baron talked with the group’s composer, Justin Sherburn, about the significance of the Ukrainian-made classic in this political moment, and music’s ability to blend history with new ways of thinking. Listen to the conversation above.

Alex Chambers
Alex Chambers runs WFIU’s arts desk, and produces and hosts WFIU’s Inner States, a weekly podcast and radio show about arts, culture, and ideas from southern Indiana and beyond. He’s the co-creator of How to Survive the Future, a podcast about the present, produced in partnership with Indiana Humanities. He has a PhD in American Studies, with a dissertation called Climate Violence and the Poetics of Refuge, and a book of poems called Bindings: A Preparation, about domestic life and empire. In his spare time, he teaches audio storytelling at the IU Media School. When he’s not in the woods gathering sound, you might see him out for a run on the streets of Bloomington.
See stories by Alex Chambers