Buster Keaton’s 1924 comedy The Navigator is a film that the famous comedian considered to be the best in his work. Its show will be accompanied by organ improvisations by the excellent Karol Mossakowski – the first foreign titular organist of the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, an improvisation teacher, artist-in-residence at Radio France for three seasons, and currently at NOSPR. The virtuoso is also no stranger to film improvisation – his accompaniment to The Passion of Joan of Arc, performed during the Lumière Festival in Lyon in 2017, was released on DVD by Gaumont-Pathé.

The NFM Organ Cinema is inspired by this short period in the history of cinematography that is using the organ in cinema. From the first screening of the famous Lumière Brothers’ Workers Leaving the Factory, cinema remained silent for over thirty years. At that time, cinema owners made up for the lack of sound on the screen in various ways. In the beginning, pianists were hired to play live to films, and some cinemas could also afford to pay for music bands and even orchestras. Yet another alternative has emerged. In 1914, the rights to build the theatre organ according to the idea of the Englishman Robert Hope-Jones were taken over by the American company Wurlitzer. Almost two and a half thousand instruments left the workshop, and the lion’s share of them hit the cinemas. Over time, the invention also reached Poland. In the late 1920s, the original American instrument was installed in the Colosseum cinema in Warsaw. More or less at the same time, instruments of Polish construction were also delivered to the Sun cinema in Poznań. However, already in 1930, the first sound films began to appear in our country and musical instruments were no longer needed in cinemas.

The slapstick, technically impressive Navigator presents the adventures of Rollo Treadway. The wealthy Treadway decides to propose to a girl from a rich family, Betsy O'Brien. When he meets rejection, a series of coincidences causes him to end up with his would-be fiancée on board an empty warship, which is sabotaged, unmoored and begins a lonely drift in the Pacific. The screening of the film with live music in the Main Hall of the National Forum of Music will take place as part of the 23rd International Film Festival “New Horizons”.