Outdoor Movies Shown at the Cambridge Film Festival

Outdoors has become the new fourth wall for film festivals making a splash in a crowded marketplace. “This summer I've watched films al fresco in the company of thousands in the town squares of Bologna and Locarno,” wrote one critic, “whose festivals make these public screenings their nightly centerpieces.” Edinburgh gathered classic crowd-pleasers for a weekend under the stars; the London Film Festival took over Trafalgar Square. With screens growing ubiquitous at home and in the pocket, outdoor screenings allow festivals to stress their selling points of scale and community.

The Cambridge Film Festival hosted three screens on Quayside and Magdalene Street -- the city's oldest shopping street -- screening old silent films suited to outdoor acoustics. To one side of the bridge, flowers blossomed in time-lapse, their reflections dissolving on the River Cam. To the other, audiences watched Buster Keaton. Up the road, archive footage of Cambridge unfolded against the street it was filmed on -- bicycles, buses, and students of an earlier era rising up to haunt the present. Neil Brand accompanied each screen on piano. The festival continued through the following Sunday with retrospectives on Derek Jarman, Boris Karloff, Polish cinema, and the golden age of Warner Bros.