Not-So-Silent Cinema

Overview

Three nights, five iconic movies, one glorious blast from the past: that's the maths behind Not-So-Silent Cinema. A collaboration between ACMI and Federation Square — and screening at the latter, too — this outdoor season showcases iconic silent films for free under the stars. Even better: they're all playing with live soundtracks.

Silent cinema didn't mean ditching all sound completely a century back, after all, and it definitely doesn't now. So, while you sit in a deckchair and peer at Fed Square's big screen between Friday, December 2–Sunday, December 4, you'll be listening to something ace as you watch.

Each session kicks off at 8pm, starting on Friday with 1902's science-fiction delight Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon), which screens alongside Buster Keaton's 1922 short Cops and Milt Gross' 1930 effort He Done Her Wrong. On music duty: American-born jazz saxophonist and composer Phillip Johnston and his quartet.

Then, on Saturday you can catch Carl Theodor Dreyer's influential feature 1932 Vampyr, which will get a brand-new soundtrack from Melbourne-based DJ and composer Chiara Kickdrum. And, on the Sunday, Teinosuke Kinugasa's 1926 movie A Page of Madness will play accompanied by an electronic score performed by Marcus Whale and Jacques Emery.

An added bonus as part of the fun: free ice cream from Cups n Cones. There'll be gelato and sorbet, with nine flavours on offer from 7.30–9.30pm each night until they're all gone — with a limit of one per person.