BAC / Liz Moreton, Senior Producer (On the Cabinet)
The Cabinet have worked with BAC over a decade. Working with emerging creatives and families, they bring stories and heritage to life using stunning animation, innovative scores and inclusive workshops.
Roisin, Participant (On The Enchanted Cinema)
Thanks so much for a truly amazing show – I absolutely love what you do. It’s just so unique and in a world of CGI and flashy 3D animation, the beautiful, textual, thought provoking world you opened the children up to was very special and memorable.
David, Talkies Community Cinema (On The Enchanted Cinema)
Working with The Enchanted Cinema was brilliant. A family event with animations had 50 children engaging excitedly with Kieron and Gareth using all sorts of sound effects – the penguin noises were especially enthusiastic!
Nomad Cinema (On the Cabinet)
The Cabinet of Living Cinema screenings have been the highlight of the Nomad calendar for the last 5 years; the personal favourite of everyone on the Nomad team, as well as an atmospheric trip into “living” cinema for our audience. Well known silent-era pieces such as Nosferatu or Man With A Movie Camera become something else entirely in their hands. These are immersive, but joyfully gimmick-free film nights which will linger with you long after the lights go back up.
Mark Shaw, Contributor/ Audience (On The Enchanted Cinema)
I really enjoyed all aspects of this remarkable event and it was an excellent choice of venue – and location – beneath the welcoming and protective branches of our distant cousin. Phenomenal musicianship, extraordinary creativity, excellent choice of films and a wonderful atmosphere … definitely a very special and memorable occasion.
Kimberley, Contributor/ Audience (On The Enchanted Cinema)
An enchanting experience in a magical setting. It’s not every day you get to sit under the stars in a forest glade.The use of live musical accompaniment really draws you into the animations and each musical performance was exactly suited to the tone and action of the stories. We even got to join in with some of the sound effects! Many thanks for an enjoyable summer evening.
Alastair Sooke, Daily Telegraph (On the Cabinet – Kingdom of Paul Nash)
..Mesmerising, dream-like, and wonderfully illustrated and animated, The Cabinet of Living Cinema’s second “graphic novel ballad” touches upon Nash’s experiences on the Western Front during the First World War as well as his affair with the artist Eileen Agar in Dorset during the Thirties. Rich in symbolism and metaphor, it also benefits from a lilting, intense score with wistful folk songs, dramatising elemental aspects of Dorset’s landscape and, of course, the love affair itself. Beautiful.****
V & A Museum (On the Cabinet @ Hollywood Costume)
a fantastic experience…a performance perfectly tailored to the Hollywood Costume Exhibition. The live foley performances were fascinating and their knowledge of the history of the moving image adds to the experience.
Dixe Wills, Guardian (On the Cabinet)
There’s something wonderfully old school about walking into a cinema and discovering that the score you’re about to hear is to be performed live. The instinctive reaction is to check your pockets for Strand cigarettes and a pension book just in case you’ve injudiciously stepped into a time warp. This is, after all, the Bethnal Green Road, where stranger things happen on a daily basis.
The Cabinet of Living Cinema’s take on this throw-back to the halcyon days of celluloid is one that wanders amiably through the no-man’s-land between the fully-fledged musical ensembles that once lurked in orchestra pits and the single Wurlitzer that emerged all stops blazing from the floor.
Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman (On the Cabinet)
It’s the final night of the New Works, New Worlds event at the Arches and it’s good to report that after a subdued start, the annual festival of experimental work – curated by artistic director Suzi Simpson – is beginning to look much more like its feisty, fascinating self…Over in Arch 6, Kieron Maguire and his fellow musicians – on dulcimer, guitar, violin and percussion – simply ravish the audience with their Cabinet Of Living Cinema, which offers some wonderful mid-20th-century short films by Maya Deren, the Brothers Quay, and Andrei Khrjanovsky, which is made even more vivid by a 21st century musical accompaniment. It’s possibly not theatre. But it’s living performance. ****
(Arches, Glasgow)
Donald Hutera, The Times (On the Cabinet)
Over four hours I had six gem-like experiences, starting in a pristine white room (for Melanie Wilson’s strange, dreamy The View From Here, in which an audience member has their eyes bandaged before being gently tucked up, with headphones on, in a hospital bed) and ending with a concert by the multi-talented Kieron Chissik and three colleagues from the Cabinet of Living Cinema to accompany screenings of a handful of sensational avant-garde and animated films. ****
(Forest Fringe/ BAC)
