Silent Cinema
The dialogue between sound and image
Accompanying a silent film is not illustrating. It's listening.
Listening to the rhythm of the editing, the light, the faces, the silences between the intertitles. And responding — in real time, without a safety net, in the moment.
Each screening is unique. The same film, accompanied twice, never sounds the same way. That's the nature of improvisation: the film leads, the pianist follows, and something is born between the two that belongs to neither.
Career
Deborah has been accompanying silent cinema since the mid-1990s, first at the Cinema Museum in Brussels, then at festivals and cinematheques worldwide.
Festivals and venues
Recent evolution
Piano and synthesizer
For certain films, the piano alone is no longer enough. Deborah explores adding synthesizer to expand the sonic palette — electronic textures that extend the pianistic gesture without replacing it.
Metropolis
Fritz Lang, 1927Lang's visual gigantism calls for layers, rumblings, a grandeur that the piano alone cannot carry.
Chang
Cooper & Schoedsack, 1927This documentary filmed in Siam demands unprecedented sonic colours: the forest, the animals, an immersive nature.
At Le Papillon
Each month, Deborah curates and accompanies a screening at Le Papillon, in Mexico City. A faithful audience, an intimate venue, carefully chosen films.
It's as much a laboratory as a performance.
The film doesn't need me. But together, we can create something that didn't exist before.