Each film is an opportunity to discover a new way of approaching silent film
Phillip Johnston has been composing for film for over 30 years. His original score for silent film was in 1993, with Tod Browning’s The Unknown (1926). It premiered at the American Museum of the Moving Image. In 2002 his score for F.W. Murnau’s Faust (1926), commissioned by the Lincoln Center Film Society, premiered at the New York Film Festival.
After moving to Sydney in 2005, he worked with creative Australian directors on a range of films, including Stolen Life,Mr. Sin: The Abe Saffron Story, and Shock Room.
His first academic book, Silent Films/Loud Music: New Ways of Listening to and Thinking about Silent Film Music, was released on Bloomsbury Academic in September of 2021.
Inside the mind…
His score for The Unknown is an homage to the horror/silent film era, his Georges Méliès Project a study in different approaches to eight short films, his Page of Madness score uses carefully scored improvisation, and his Faust score features original songs as well as underscore.
His most recent score
for The Adventures of Prince Achmed, again represents a new approach to music for silent film. Combining electronic and acoustic instruments, the score is structured around a pre-recorded score of sampled electronic loops and percussion. Against this, a live band will perform, consisting of two keyboards, soprano saxophone, & trombone. The music is through-composed, seasoned with elements of improvisation, and invokes elements of jazz, blues, minimalism and classical music.
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His scores have been widely performed in Europe, Australia and the United States, at venues including The New York Film Festival, The Sydney Film Festival, The Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema, The Virginia Film Festival, The Roma Jazz & Image Festival (Rome, Italy), Rote Fabrik (Zurich, Switzerland), Slovenska kinoteka (Ljubljana, Slovenia), The Melbourne Festival of the Arts, The Sydney Opera House, MONA FOMA (Tasmania), German Film Festival (Sydney, Australia), American Museum of the Moving Image, Revelation Perth International Film Festival, and many others.
- Silent Film & Comics
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) is a silent silhouette animation by Lotte Reiniger, considered by many to be the first…
This 1926 German Expressionist silent film, starring Emil Jannings, Gösta Ekman, and Camilla Horn, was Murnau’s last German film before…
One of the most startling and striking silent films from Japan, PAGE OF MADNESS was rediscovered by director Teinosuke Kinugasa…
The films of Georges Méliès, one of the cinema’s earliest visionaries, have inspired filmmakers for over 100 years. Practitioners as…
This score for Tod Browning’s 1927 silent film The Unknown was originally commissioned by The American Museum of the Moving…
