"OST UND WEST" (EAST AND WEST) Silent Movie with Live Music

Join us for the latest in our silent movie and live music series! Q&A with the artists to follow the screening.

OST UND WEST (Vienna, 1923); EAST AND WEST (New York, 1924) 

Starring MOLLY PICON, leading lady of New York's Yiddish stage and screen in the role of an “irrepressible American Shikse teaching Yeshiva boys how to shimmy.” (J Hoberman)

Part romance, part comedic shtik, this charming film, and its “Will they? Won’t they” plot, speaks to driving cultural and political issues of the day.  Set against the real life backdrop of insurgent, Nazi fueled antisemitism, the movie’s story line dramatizes the ongoing angst that was European Jewish self-identity, and its warring halves: the “East” vs “West” of the title.  A not-to-be-missed opportunity to enjoy this once massively popular and still fascinating silent era event.  

The film has been newly restored by Filmarchiv, Austria with an original score composed and performed by world-renowned klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals and Donald Sosin, the celebrated silent film pianist who have been bringing audiences to their feet throughout the US and Europe with their unique and stirring violin and piano scores for Jewish-themed silent films.

The performance is free and open to the public.

Hosted by the Judaic Studies Department with help from co-sponsors: College of Jewish Studies, the Music Department, and the Cinema Department. With special thanks to the Music Department for their expert support.

This program is made possible by a generous grant from the Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts, La Jolla, California.

ARTIST BIOS:
 
Violinist/composer Alicia Svigals is the world's leading klezmer fiddler and a founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics. She has performed with and written for violinist Itzhak Perlman, and has worked with the the Kronos Quartet, playwrights Tony Kushner and Eve Ensler, poet Allen Ginsburg, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Debbie Friedman and Chava Albershteyn. Svigals was awarded a Foundation for Jewish Culture commission for her original score to the 1918 film The Yellow Ticket, and is a MacDowell fellow. With jazz pianist Uli Geissendoerfer, she recently released Beregovski Suite , a recording of contemporary interpretations of klezmer music from a long-lost Soviet Jewish archive. Her CD Fidl (1996) reawakened klezmer fiddle tradition. Her newest CD is Beregovski Suite: Klezmer Reimagined, with jazz pianist Uli Geissendoerfer - an original take on long-lost Jewish music from Ukraine.

Pianist/composer Donald Sosin has performed his scores for silent films, often with his wife, singer/percussionist Joanna Seaton, at Lincoln Center, MoMA, BAM, the National Gallery; and major film festivals in New York, San Francisco, Telluride, Hollywood, Pordenone, Bologna, Shanghai, Bangkok, Berlin, Vienna, Moscow, and Jecheon, South Korea. He records for Criterion, Kino, Milestone and Flicker Alley, and his scores are heard frequently on TCM. Sosin has had commissions from MoMA, the Chicago Symphony Chorus, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra
 

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