Vintage Films Night: Timeless Comedies
Description
A rollicking fun evening with a Flash Gordon episode and two hilarious Buster Keaton films accompanied by live piano music composed and performed by Shauna-Pickett Gordon.
“Flash Gordon” (Segment #5 of the Serial) 1936
Flash Gordon is a superhero movie serial that holds up as a campy blast from the past. Presented in 13 chapters, it is the first screen adventure for Flash Gordon, the comic-strip character created by Alex Raymond in 1934. It presents the story of Gordon's visit to the planet Mongo and his encounters with the evil Emperor Ming the Merciless. Buster Crabbe, Jean Rogers, Charles Middleton, Priscilla Lawson and Frank Shannon portray the film's central characters.
Silent films with live piano accompaniment by Shauna Pickett-Gordon
Shauna Pickett-Gordon will accompany the silent films performing her original scores on piano!
Buster Keaton in “One Week” 1920
In the first film he released on his own, Buster Keaton stars with Sybil Seeley as newlyweds who receive a kit house as a wedding gift. The instructions describe how to construct the house by assembling materials in numbered packing crates. A rejected suitor secretly renumbers packing crates, and the result is a lopsided structure with revolving walls, kitchen fixtures on the exterior, and upper-floor doors that open onto thin air. During a housewarming party on Friday the 13th, a storm spins the house and its occupants around like a merry-go-round.
Buster Keaton in “The Electric House” 1922
Three graduating college students drop their degree certificates, and each picks up the wrong ones off the floor. Keaton plays a botany student who accidentally picks up an electrical engineering degree and is hired to wire a fancy mansion using many gadgets. The graduate who actually is the electrical engineer is angry because he didn’t get the job and he was once in love with the same woman as Keaton’s character. He exacts revenge by rewiring all the gadgets to cause hilarious mayhem.
Shauna Pickett-Gordon
From the age of five, Shauna Pickett-Gordon has played, studied, and experimented with piano music. Her main path is the classical repertoire – both solo and collaborative – but side trips include playing keyboards and directing choirs in churches; directing and playing for two Scottish fiddle orchestras; playing the piano parts in orchestras, and occasionally performing a concerto; singing; teaching piano and voice; and creating and performing original scores for silent films. She composes and arranges music for the groups with which she performs. Music conservatory training somehow led to a career in technical writing, but retirement in turn has led to re-immersion in all things piano, especially chamber music.
