Pick of the Day: Alloy Orchestra performs with The General (6 p.m.) and Man With a Movie Camera (8 p.m.)
- Buster Keaton in The General
As far as I’m concerned this isn’t just the pick of the day, it’s the pick of the festival. The three-man Alloy Orchestra — Ken Winokur on clarinet, Mission of Burma guitarist Roger C. Miller on synthesizers, and Terry Donahue accordion, percussion, and musical saw — has built a niche writing and performing live scores for classic silent films. They were last at Indie Memphis in 2006 performing with The Phantom of the Opera. This year they return with two far superior films. The General is the signature film from brilliant silent-era comedian and physical performer Buster Keaton, who stars as a locomotive engineer in the Civil War-era South whose train is overtaken by Union spies. Man With a Movie Camera is a profoundly influential film from Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov. Essentially a series of city scenes captured by a newsreel cameraman, Vertov transforms the footage with an array of then-groundbreaking but now familiar editing and post-production tricks. These are both being screened on new 35 mm prints with Alloy’s live accompaniment. As of press time, there were still some tickets available for both screenings. This is not to be missed — Chris Herrington
