Iffi set to relive early film-viewing experience

Panaji: In its nascent stages, live music was often played during film-screenings to enhance one’s viewing

experience

. This changed following the advent of talkies. As one of Asia’s biggest

film

festivals the International Film

Festival

of India (

Iffi

) celebrates its golden jubilee year, this lost form of film-viewing will be recreated.

A master performer will play the

piano

during the

screening

of three films at Iffi, including a Alfred Hitchcock thriller.

“Before films became the leading art form of the modern century, they were conceptualised as a series of visual spectacles. In those days, to heighten the impact of such films, special live music would be performed by either a solo musician or a group under the direction of a composer. With the advent of sound films, this feature of the film-viewing experience soon faded out. Witness this long-forgotten way of enjoying a film as Iffi 2019 takes you back in time. The stellar performance to be put up by the pianist is something one cannot afford to give a miss,” the directorate of film festivals (DFF) has announced.

Three classics by three master filmmakers will see the screenings accompanied by a master pianist performing live at Iffi.

The films include, ‘Battleship Potemkin’, by Russian master filmmaker and pioneer of montage editing, Sergei M. Eisenstein, ‘Pandora’s Box’, by German expressionist master G W Pabst, and ‘Blackmail’, by British filmmaker and master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock.