If you’re someone who takes note of advances in technology and reacts to them in some way, you’re most likely in one of two camps: the Nostalgia Camp or the Opportunity Camp. But it’s possible to have a foot in both camps, valuing the past and envisioning the future all at the same time. A somewhat recent revival of silent films with live performances is a good example.

John Brownlee of Wired recently wrote a post about this, “Filmmakers Seek Future in Past.” He says the silent film medium was pretty much killed about 80 years ago, with advances in sound recording. Now, Brownlee writes:

Prolific modern-day directors like Guy Maddin work largely in the medium of silent film to convey postmodern tales. Silent film festivals are held annually around the world: from San Francisco to Kansas, from Italy to Australia. The Chilean subways are plastered with thousands of still images, coming to life as contiguous strips of film as the trains rumble by. And numerous groups throughout the United States have been inspired to compose and perform live original scores to silent film.

Silent film has much to offer, creatively–it doesn’t have to be left in the Museum of How We Used to Make Movies. It’s true that although certain stories and messages are very difficult to communicate in a silent film, other material can be more fully and less-awkwardly communicated without sound, or at least without words. Adding a live score allows even more opportunities to communicate and convey emotion. (Check out the Alloy Orchestra, which some of the Spout team heard accompany Lonesome at Telluride last year.)

In all, I think the revival of silent films is an exciting development, especially for musicians and composers who have a whole slew of classics to pick from and play with. But will filmmakers get excited about potential new opportunities for them? And are the opportunities really new, or are they just exercises in nostalgia? Obviously, it can go in either direction, depending on the intentions and visions of the people behind the project. In terms of moving the medium forward, here’s an interesting prediction from Cherchi Usai, the director of Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive:

Curiously, it is in the ubiquitous digital advertising displays littering modern cities that Cherchi Usai sees the future of silent film, pointing to the Going Underground film festival, a weeklong event in January where silents from local filmmakers were shown in Berlin’s subways.

“Silent cinema is penetrating our lives in new, unpredictable ways,” says Cherchi Usai. “There is a paradigm shift. This is an evolution of the silent film experience into a completely different technology. And it could not have happened before.”