The Reel Music Ensemble breathes new life into old films

 The local composer Matt Marshall fell in love with silent film when, at age 13, he saw Lon Chaney Sr. —“the Man of 1,000 Faces”—in a PBS broadcast of The Phantom of the Opera. “There was a beauty to it, just the sight of people moving through sets,” says Marshall. “It was like a combination […]

To the Light House

As research for a larger story on Virginia’s film industry, I took a trip to Richmond’s Byrd Theater in February to check out the Virginia Independent Film Festival. As I sat through a series of short films that were both good and bad—and all presumably made by adults—I was surprised to see that the festival’s […]