Featuring extracts from his rarest work through to Napoleon, Kevin Brownlow, film historians David Robinson and Andrew Kelly, and actor Paul McGann explore French filmmaker Abel Gance’s formidable, often underrated contribution to cinema.

The Music of Light: Abel Gance and Kevin Brownlow

Bristol Festival of Ideas pays tribute to one of the greatest filmmakers and one of the best film historians. Film historian, Kevin Brownlow, and French pioneer filmmaker, Abel Gance, shared a passion for cinema when they met at the National Film Theatre in 1951. Brownlow was just a 16-year old school boy but the two forged a friendship and creative alliance that lasted until Gance’s death in 1981. Gance regarded film as ‘the Music of Light’. He is best remembered for his masterpiece epic from the silent era, Napoleon (1927). Brownlow painstakingly restored the film over two decades, and the response to its exhibition in the 1970s and 1980s initiated a complete re-evaluation of Gance’s role in cinema history.

Inspired by Gance, Brownlow spent ten years making his first feature It Happened Here with school friend Andrew Mollo. Kevin went on to become one of the foremost experts in silent cinema as a prolific writer, documentary filmmaker and film historian. His written works include the seminal The Parade’s Gone By (1968) and David Lean: a Biography (1991). In this brief season we celebrate the work of two passionate visionary filmmakers, exploring their relationship and inspirations and, most importantly, their films. Musical accompaniment is provided on the piano by Neil Brand, widely considered to be one of the finest exponents of silent film, and on violin by Guenter Buchwald.