The VTIFF screening room with instruments in the right corner. Photo by Grace Taylor<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nJust as silent films are a constrained form of communication, Hagen limits his creative options, only bringing two guitars to each performance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to be distracted by all of these bells and whistles,\u201d he said, noting that the special guest often serves as the added flair.<\/p>\n
Well-versed in many genres, Hagen\u2019s instrumentation brings a new twist to silent films. When his musical equipment malfunctioned at the screening of \u201cThat Night\u2019s Wife,\u201d Hagen thought, \u201cDo I panic, or do I accept this situation?\u201d He chose to pick up his Spanish guitar and began to strum. The instrument\u2019s bittersweet tone ebbed and flowed with the film\u2019s somber and dramatic moments.<\/p>\n
Each genre presents different challenges for Hagen. \u201cThat Night\u2019s Wife\u201d<\/em>\u00a0begins with a suspenseful start, revealing the robber\u2019s motive for committing the crime: to have enough money to care for his sick daughter.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m reacting in real time to what I\u2019m seeing,\u201d he said. Of the film\u2019s sad twist, he said, \u201cI just played the way I felt.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the film progressed, Hagen created themes for each character. A mournful melody filled the theater when the sick child came on screen, and a repetitive strumming emerged when the robber had encounters with the police.\u00a0<\/strong>Each note felt intentional. Rather than focusing purely on sound, Hagen created a story with the instrumentation.<\/p>\n\u201cI don\u2019t know who\u2019s going to get what theme and what that theme is going to be, but I do have that in mind as a typical practice of film,\u201d Hagen said.<\/p>\n
So much modern media is fast-paced and highly stimulating, and live improvised music helps people engage with the stripped-back quality of silent films.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause they\u2019re silent, the visual language is just amazing,\u201d viewer Lee Hauslein said.<\/p>\n
MacQueen tried to keep the films on the shorter side, given audiences\u2019 limited attention spans. \u201cThat Night\u2019s Wife,\u201d for instance, ran only 65 minutes. Nevertheless, he believes that the more people become chained to their devices, the hungrier they are for analog refuges.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat people discover when they open themselves to silent films is how much they still have to say,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Catch the next Musical Silent, \u201cThe Golem,\u201d directed by Paul Wegener, on July 8.<\/p>\n\n
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\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source vermontdailychronicle.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vermont International Film Festival\u2019s Musical Silents provides a new way of exploring an age-old medium. A still from \u201cThat Night\u2019s Wife.\u201d Photo: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By\u00a0Grace Taylor, for the Community News Service BURLINGTON \u2014 Black and white shots of a thief flashed across moviegoers\u2019 eyes as they say, enveloped in plush red chairs. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2467365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2467364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/A-new-Burlington-film-series-pairs-silent-films-with-live.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2467364"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2467366,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467364\/revisions\/2467366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2467365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2467364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2467364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2467364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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