ALBANY — The UAlbany Performing Arts Center, in partnership with the New York State Writers Institute, will present a free screening of The City Without Jews accompanied with live original music composed and performed by world-renowned klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals and celebrated silent film pianist Donald Sosin. The event takes place 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 19.
A chilling premonition of the Holocaust released in 1924, The City Without Jews (Die Stadt ohne Juden) is 91 minutes in length with English intertitles.
Based on the controversial and bestselling dystopian novel by Hugo Bettauer, H.K. Breslauer’s silent masterpiece was produced two years after the book’s publication, shortly before the satirical events depicted in the fictional story transformed into an all-too-horrific reality. Restored by Filmarchiv Austria, all complete prints of the film were thought to have been destroyed, but thanks to the discovery of a nitrate print in a Parisian flea market in 2015, this film can once again be appreciated in its ever-relevant entirety.
Though darkly comedic in tone and stylistically influenced by German Expressionism, the film nonetheless contains ominous and eerily realistic sequences, such as shots of freight trains transporting Jews out of the city. The film’s stinging critique of Nazism is part of the reason it was no longer screened in public after 1933.
Music: Alicia Svigals and Donald Sosin. Svigals is the world’s leading klezmer violinist and a founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics. She has performed with and written for violinist Itzhak Perlman, Kronos Quartet, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, poet Allen Ginsberg and many others. Sosin is one of the world’s top silent film musicians. He has performed his scores for silent films, often with his singer/percussionist wife Joanna Seaton, at Lincoln Center, MoMA, BAM and National Gallery as well as at major film festivals across the world.
This performance is free and no tickets or reservations are required. For further information, contact the Box Office at 518-442-3997 or visit the Performing Arts Center website at www.albany.edu/pac. The web includes information on the most up-to-date Covid protocols.
