Event Details
We’re proud to announce a special screening of SHERLOCK JR on Saturday November 7th to honor the historic Palace Theatre’s 100th anniversary during the 25th Lake Placid Film Festival (11/5-8)! Additionally, world-renowned composer and silent film accompanist Makia Matsumura will be providing live piano accompaniment for the screening. Don’t miss out on what is sure to be a magical screening!
A kindly movie projectionist (Buster Keaton) longs to be a detective. When his fiancée (Kathryn McGuire) is robbed by a local thief (Ward Crane), the poor projectionist is framed for the crime. Using his amateur detective skills, the projectionist follows the thief to the train station — only to find himself locked in a train car. Disheartened, he returns to his movie theater, where he falls asleep and dreams that he is the great Sherlock Holmes.
Screening rights courtesy of Janus Films
Guests
Makia Matsumura- Composer, Silent Film Accompanist
Composer and pianist Makia Matsumura has built a dynamic career spanning film scoring, concert music, and live silent film accompaniment. Her music has been featured on ABC News, NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), Turner Classic Movies, and Netflix, as well as at venues including Lincoln Center (NYC), Musikverein (Vienna), Konzerthaus (Berlin), and NHK and Suntory Halls (Tokyo).
A Tokyo native, Makia began studying piano and composition at six and made her debut as a composer-performer at twelve. She has performed internationally with orchestras such as the Hungarian National Symphony, Berlin Radio Symphony, and the Tokyo and Kyoto Symphony Orchestras. She earned a bachelor’s degree in composition from Tokyo University of the Arts and a master’s degree from The Juilliard School, where she won the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s First Hearing Competition and had works premiered by the Juilliard Symphony.
Since discovering the art of silent film accompaniment in 2003, she has become one of the most sought-after pianists in the field. She has performed at MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and the Library of Congress, as well as the National Film Archive of Japan. In 2018, she was invited as a Faculty Artist at the Art of the Piano festival at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, where she lectured on silent film accompaniment and improvisation.
Makia also provides recorded scores for silent film restorations and home video releases, including Kino Lorber’s Pioneers of African-American Cinema (2015) and Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers (2018), as well as the 2024 restoration of The Dragon Painter from Milestone Films.
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