FREE MASSIVE MUSIC & MOVIES EVENING SHOWCASES DYNAMIC COLLABORATION BETWEEN MOVIES AND MUSIC.

Legendary silent film Metropolis is accompanied by live, improvised music

Snowmass Village, Colo. - The final summer Massive Music & Movies collaboration between Aspen Film and Snowmass Village takes place on August 25 featuring a FREE showing of Fritz Lang's celebrated 1927 silent film classic Metropolis played to improvisational live musical accompaniment.

"We wanted to choose a special movie experience to close out the summer series at Snowmass," says Laura Thielen, Aspen Film Executive Director. "This movie is legendary in the film world, but it's so visually astonishing and advanced for its time that contemporary audiences will find it electrifying as well. With the completely originally music accompaniment, this screening  will appeal to movie buffs, music aficionados, and anyone interested in architecture and visual design."

Director Fritz Lang's visionary 1927 silent film about the excesses of capitalism was made between the two World Wars and was the most expensive silent film ever made. Monumental in both scale of production and the themes it addresses, the film is widely regarded as the pinnacle of German Expressionist filmmaking from the 1920s and the first science fiction film ever made.

The movie takes place in 2027 in the futuristic mechanized city of Metropolis, which is divided into two rigid groups: one group lives high above the earth in luxury, while the other toils underground to sustain the lives of the privileged. When the ruler's son falls for Maria, a beautiful woman who takes up the workers' cause, he follows her down into the working underworld and, shocked at what he finds, joins her. Struggling against robot impersonators, worker rebellion, mass floods and more, the hero and heroine must find a way to reunite the two halves of society in this epic story.

In a nod to silent film tradition, Metropolis will be accompanied by a trio of talented musicians. Pianist Hank Troy, who has been accompanying silent films since the 1980s, percussionist Ed Contreras who adds drama to a film with his musical rhythms and sound effects, and accordionist Rodney Sauer, who as director of the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra has toured the country performing historically accurate silent film scores, present what is in essence a once-in-a-lifetime show.

"Silent Film originally was meant to be a live musical performance tradition like the ballet, and it's important to see the movies like that," says Sauer. "We come up with a few main themes in advance, but then we also improvise as we watch the movie and with a trio, it's a little like jumping out of an airplane. Like at a jazz concert, we are inventing music right there that might never be heard again."

This FREE dynamic combination of music and image takes center stage at the Cabaret Room in the Silvertree Hotel at 7:30 p.m. on August 25. For more information, visit http://www.snowmassvillage.com/ or call 1-800-SNOWMASS.