Northern Silents will celebrate director Fritz Lang’s masterpiece Metropolis at The National Science and Media Museum in Bradford next March, with a special live‑scored screening.
On 21st March 1927, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, starring Brigitte Helm, Alfred Abel and Gustav Frohlich had its British premiere, unveiling a vision of the future that has echoed through popular culture for a century. One hundred years to the day, Northern Silents will mark this anniversary with a special live‑scored screening.
Lang’s portrait of a towering future city, divided between the privileged above and the workers below, remains one of cinema’s most influential achievements. Yet Metropolis was a flop in 1927, and soon after its Berlin premiere the studio cut away a quarter of the film, leaving the story in disarray. Those missing forty minutes were assumed lost until, in 2008, almost all the absent scenes were discovered in an attic in Argentina and the film was painstakingly reconstructed.
For the planned centenary screening, tickets available here, pianist Jonny Best and percussionist Trevor Bartlett will perform a live, improvised score: a conversation in sound shaped moment by moment as the film unfolds. Their partnership began over a decade ago at Leeds International Film Festival, and has since grown through more than a hundred performances, each one created from scratch in front of an audience. Together they bring Metropolis to life with music that is responsive, inventive and entirely of the moment.
At the dawn of the twentieth century, moving images swept across the world and a new art form was born: the cinema. The technology to synchronise recorded sound with film was still decades away, yet screenings were rarely silent. Initially, musical forces ranged from a solo pianist to a trio or small ensemble. Later, as silent cinema reached its height of expressiveness, orchestras became more common. A film could travel the globe unchanged, but its accompanying music was always local, always live, and always different. Each screening was a one‑off encounter between image and sound, shaped by the musicians in the room.
Northern Silents re‑imagines this world for today. They bring silent‑era films back to the screen with brand new music, created by artists across traditions: jazz improvisers, folk players, experimental sound makers, specialist silent film musicians, classical performers, brass bands, ensembles, and sometimes their own orchestra, Northern Silents Sinfonia.
Every performance is a meeting of past and present, the vision of filmmakers from a century ago joined with the creativity of musicians here and now. Together they create cinema as a living art form, reborn in performance.
Thea von Harbou (27th December 1888 – 1st July 1954) was a prolific German author and screenwriter, who achieved great success in the male-dominated German film industry, and at one point, and is reputed to have been the highest-paid screenwriter in Germany.
She published over forty books, including novels, childrens’ books, and collections of short stories, poems, and essays. She also wrote or collaborated on the screenplays for somewhere around seventy full-length motion pictures in the silent and sound era. Metropolis is probably the best known; ironically, her novel based on that screenplay is also her best-known book. Her other works, such as The Indian Tomb and The Escape of Beate Hoyermann, have only been available in English within the past ten years.
Although von Harbou was at home in many different forms and genres, her typical heroine is a strong-willed, independent woman often called upon to rescue and redeem the men in her life.
She was married three times: to actor Rudolph Klein-Rogge (who played leading roles in many of her films), director Fritz Lang (whose celebrated silent films were all written by her), and journalist and Indian patriot Ayi Tendulkar.
• Metropolis | 1.00pm and 3.00pm, Sunday 21st March 2027 | Pictureville Cinema, BradfordNational Science and Media Museum, Bradford, England BD1 1NQ | Buy tickets here
• For further information about Northern Silents, or to discuss opportunities to collaborate, please contact artistic director, Jonny Best
Head downthetubes for…
• PaleoFutures: Behind the Scenes Photos of the Classic Film Metropolis
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
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