Nashville Electric presents their silent-film scoring of “Orson’s Folly”. This unique performance features Music City experimental-music group Nashville Electric scoring the live screening of Orson Welles’ “Four Men on a Raft” sequence from Welles’ aborted (but much-revered) 1942 film documentary, It’s All True.

After Welles had completed both Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons in early 1942, the great filmmaker went to Brazil as part of a United States Government-sponsored bit of cultural exchange. When neither the studio nor the government saw the feel-good footage they expected, RKO slashed Welles’ budget–he was left with one silent black-and-white movie camera. The film had been premised on the inclusion of three stories that took place in South America but the momentum was lost. Still, Welles shot a great section of footage in Brazil, and the story Welles recorded caught the attention of news editors as far away as the United States.

Four poor “jangadeiros”–raft fishermen–set sail on a newly built raft named after their patron saint, São Pedro. Their intention was to travel roughly 1,650 miles without a compass along the Atlantic coast to Rio de Janeiro. They undertook their voyage so that they could speak directly with Brazilian president Getúlio Vargas regarding their unusually harsh working conditions and lack of medical and death benefits. The filming of the reconstruction of the raft journey was marred by tragedy and despite efforts by Welles to finance and complete it, the footage was stashed in a can in storage on the studio lot until a studio archivist unearthed it in 1981.