Capturing moving images is now commonplace with mobile phones and pocket cameras but before the digital age it wasn't so easy. Small format movie cameras were the liberating technology of the mid 20th century giving ordinary people the chance to capture everyday events on their 8mm and 16mm cameras.

Cipher (Theo Travis and Dave Sturt) have collaborated with visual artist Anthony Hatton to produce a thought-provoking and engaging visual and live musical experience using previously unseen archive footage from the Media Archive for Central England, including local images of the Midlands from the 1930s to the 1970s and with music composed by Cipher.

The new live soundtrack features Cipher - Travis on sax, flute and keys and Sturt on fretless and upright bass and sound design and combines acoustic and electric instruments with digital looping technology and computer sound processing. The musicians in Cipher have previously collaborated with Gong, Robert Fripp, Bill Nelson and David Sylvian. The score also features acclaimed string players - Deirdre Benscik (cello) and Clare Bhabra (violin) both from the Midlands based orchestra Sinfonia Viva. This will be the first time Cipher have augmented their sound with strings.

The Past Lives project will be touring the Midlands from March to July 2012 -see below for details. There will also be a series of workshops before some of the performances to enable participants to learn about writing and performing music with film. In addition some performances will also have a post show Question and Answer session.

"I spent half of it in tears, the other half smiling. Beautiful, achingly poignant. Thank you so very much."
"The film and music worked very well together"
"I have been working with archive films for nearly 35 years, at the BFI and here at MACE, and I think that was the most moving presentation I've ever seen"
"Because I am 76 I identified with all aspects of the film - it took me back to my boyhood days"
"Was lovely. Music worked so well with the film. Such nice footage."
"Well done. Very moving and lovely."
"Fantastic event, very, very moving - a wonderful evening"
"Brilliant"
"Just a great performance and wonderfully edited film"
"Unusual and moving event"
"Past Lives last night was amazing, some stunning archive and a beautiful and often playful score. Go see it! "

Review of Past Lives - LPAC Lincoln Performing Arts Centre Thursday 8th March
".each luminous frame opened a successive drawer in an archive of memories..." Richard Fung
Dave Sturt's homage to home movies 'Past Lives', based on a collection of home movies from the MACE film archive and set to a live music score, has a starring cast of very ordinary people. These are the movie makers themselves who have visually captured and preserved our collective past.
Visual artist Anthony Hatton has captured the dreamy quality of the images, sometimes saturated with colour, sometimes spotted with age and cracked emulsion - but always vibrant and nostalgic, to evoke a time when holidays were taken in Britain by the seaside, tea was drunk from cups and saucers and little boys wore short trousers and knitted tops.
The performance takes us on a journey from 1930s to the 1970s covering aspects of rural life from village carnivals and fancy dress pageants in Derbyshire and Lincolnshire to rare scenes of hop picker's lives in Herefordshire to beautifully idyllic childhood scenes from the much prized Bradley film collection.
Musicians Dave Sturt (fretless bass) Theo Travis (flute, sax), Deirdre Benscik (cello) and Clare Bhabra (violin) elevated the film to a thought-provoking poetical level with their beautiful sounds.