MANILA - Music for a silent film? A Filipino ethnic music group shows how it's done.

On screen, fugitive thief Jirokichi accuses a crying Onsen—a young woman who escaped her brother who was prostituting her—of loving him only for his money. As he leaves her alone in the sailor inn that has been their love nest, he leaves her money to pay for her “services.”
 
“You can use the money to pay your brother for your freedom. Or you can use it anyway or you want,” so goes the English subtitle.
 
Live inside the cinema, the singer of the Filipino indigenous music group Kalayo, Carol Bello, heartbreakingly wails on top of the chimes, gongs, and flute among other instruments.
 
Japanese silent film "Jirokichi the Rat"—played with Kalayo’s music—kicked off this year’s 3rd International Silent Film Festival Manila. It was co-organized with the Embassy of Japan in as the culmination of the celebration of the Philippines-Japan Friendship Month.
 
More than offering film enthusiasts in the Philippines the rare opportunity to watch movies the way they did in the silent film era—silent film and live music—the festival proves that art is truly an international language.

Seamless
 
The movie, by itself, was a treat. The 78-year old movie transports movie viewers into the old Japan—between the World Wars I and II, and when geishas and samurais thrived.
 
Kalayo's success is its ability to make the viewers forget there's a live band inside the cinema. The indigenous music seamlessly meshed with the Japanese silent film. It never once distracted the viewers but, instead, brought life to it.
 
Japan Foundation director Ben Suzuki was impressed with Kalayo himself. “It’s wonderful when two cultures synchronize,” said Ben Suzuki of the Japan Foundation, a co-sponsor of the Festival initiated by the Goethe Institut.
 
Japan Foundation, a co-sponsor of the festival, has been active in introducing Filipino culture in Japan.
 
“No, it’s not strange. The director of this movie Daisuke Ito wanted this happen. When Daisuke Ito created this move in 1931, he created a film that was part of a performing art,” said American Larry Greenberg, a Japanese silent film expert. He is the CEO of Digital Meme, a company that restores and preserves Japanese silent films.
 
“Art transcends and breaks down cultural barriers,” said Lala Fojas of the Shangri-La Mall, also a co-sponsor.
 
Jirokichi the Rat is the first of four silent films offered in The Shangri-La Mall until August 27. Italy’s The Mechanical Man, Germany’s People on Sunday, Spain’s The Cursed Village, and France’s Fantomas: Under the Shadow of the Guillotine will be shown on all Thursdays of August. Report by Carmela Fonbuena, abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak. Photo from Circuit Magazine online.