The Georges Melies Project

Overview

When a composer who has been dubbed the 'HG Wells of the jazz world' presents his contemporary musical score to the films of a magician, you know it's definitely gonna be worth going all the way out to Parramatta for.

That's what Phillip Johnson will be doing this Sunday when he creates a thrilling symmetry between his original music and the silent films of French director Georges Melies in the Georges Melies Project. Melies was one of cinema's earliest directors, and one of the first filmmakers ever to use multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, stop tricks and stunning hand-painted colour in his work. His contribution to cinema was the subject of Martin Scorsese's recent Oscar-winning film, Hugo. Trained as a magician, he took the idea of creating seemingly impossible illusions and injected it into his often bizarre but always captivating short films — of which he made more than 500 between 1896 and 1912.

A century later most of those optical gems have fallen victim to the ravages of time, and even the recently restored ones screening on Sunday have rarely been seen. And certainly not like this, with some of Australia's best jazz instrumentalists — including Daryl Pratt on vibraphone, Matt MacMahon on piano and Cameron Undy on bass — laying down the musical railroad for Johnson's enchanting score.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=4dTVfSJoj04