The Johnson Performance Hall at the Darla Moore School of Business is set to host a unique presentation: a silent film accompanied by live music.
The film is titled “The City Without Jews”, or "Die Stadt ohne Juden." It will play at the Darla Moore School of Business on Feb. 13 from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., according to the School of Music.
Originally released in 1924, the film adapted a book of the same name that satirized the rise of antisemitic attitudes in author Hugo Bettauer’s native nation of Austria. The film's release only heightened controversy surrounding Bettauer and his work as an author and journalist.
A year later in 1925, Bettauer was murdered by a member of the Nazi Party.
The artists behind the event say the film now stands as a fascinating and tragically prophetic artifact. Audra Vaz, assistant dean for advancement and lead senior director of development for the USC School of Music and the Koger Center for the Arts, said showcasing the film and its music represents a great opportunity for USC.
“We want to ensure that our students and our community have access to a diverse spectrum of music,” Vaz said. “Klezmer music is not necessarily one that we hear very often unless you’re Jewish, or something like that.”
The score that will accompany the film was composed by notable Silent Film Composer and Pianist Donald Sosin and prominent Klezmer Violinist Alicia Svigals. Sosin has over 60 years of experience writing silent film scores, while Svigals co-founded Grammy-winning band The Klezmatics and is considered a leading figure in her specialty, Klezmer.
Klezmer is a type of traditional Jewish instrumental music that traces its origins to Central and Eastern Europe.
For Sosin and Svigals, who have now been working together for over seven years and are making their second trip to USC, the performances are deeply personal.
“We both grew up listening to Jewish music,” Sosin said. “The idea that we have a chance to dig deep into our culture and bring that into these films, it’s just extraordinary.”
The event is a collaboration between the School of Music and the Anne Frank Center. Mario Haynes, who is the artistic director at the center, he hopes plays to a packed house in the 500-seat Johnson Performance Hall.
Haynes said the screening will be an immersive experience that’s different from what modern audiences are used to.
“It’s honestly like being washed over in imagination,” Haynes said. “It just wakes all of your senses up.”
Haynes said the financial support provided by the California-based Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts and the Henry and Sylvia Yaschik Foundation was very valuable in making the event happen.
Sosin described the event as a “cine-concert”, given it features a silent film and a live musical performance. He said it is distinctly different from traditional and modern film screenings.
"You’re mentally in a different space when you’re watching a silent film. To add live music gives it a real immediacy that recorded music does not,” Sosin said. “We respond to the energy of the audience.”
Svigals said the film’s lasting power is due to its continued and de ep relevance to 21st-century issues and conflicts.
“It depicts something which is the scourge of humanity right now,” Svigals said. “Deportations, exiles, this has been going on for centuries and millennia, and all of a sudden it's relevant as is talk of deportations 100 years later right here in our country.”
Svigals said she hopes the film and music have a meaningful impact on audiences.
“We hope most of all, with any work of art, that people experience, that they come away having had an emotional experience, a transporting experience,” Svigals said. “The purpose of the filmmakers was to humanize the individual people who are affected by big historical forces and the terrible decisions of callous politicians.”
More information on “The City Without Jews” screening event, which will take place on Thursday, Feb. 13, and free registration to attend can be found here. More information on the Anne Frank Center, Donald Sosin and Alicia Svigals can be found on their respective websites.