A silent film masterpiece from a hundred years ago will be screened at the biggest film festival in Romania, TIFF in Cluj, in a cineconcert. The author of the book it is based on was killed by the Nazis shortly after the film premiered

A silent film masterpiece from a hundred years ago will be screened at the biggest film festival in Romania, TIFF in Cluj, in a cineconcert.

It is about “City Without Jews”, directed by the Austrian Hans Karl Breslauer, a masterpiece of the silent film from 1924. It is the third such cine-concert from this year’s edition of the Cluj festival after “Metropolis ” and “A page of Madness”, released two and three years later, respectively. The film will be accompanied live by the world-renowned klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals and the famous silent film pianist Donald Sosin, who composed the original music, the festival organizers announced today The dinner concert will take place on Thursday, June 20 at 9:30 p.m. at the Cluj-Napoca Art Museum, and admission is by ticket.

Based on the novel by journalist and writer Hugo Bettauer, “The City Without Jews” tells a story whose implications remain as relevant as at the time of the premiere a hundred years ago, according to TIFF representatives. “In a fictional city in Austria, Utopia, the authorities decide to expel all the Jews from the country. What follows is an economic and cultural decline that will make followers of the new law question their decisions. It is a satire that, unfortunately, proved prophetic and caused the outrage of anti-Semitic groups at the time. In fact, the author of the book was killed by a member of the Nazi party shortly after the premiere of the film, which was not screened in public after 1933”.

Although the original copy of the film was considered lost, it was found by chance in 2015 at a flea market in Paris and restored by the Austrian Film Archive. In 2020, Alicia Svigals and Donald Sosin composed its original score from scratch.

Violinist and composer Alicia Svigals has an impressive list of collaborations, from violinist Itzhak Perlman to the Kronos Quartet or Led Zeppelin, and is the founder of the group Klezmatics, which in 2007 was awarded a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album. Donald Sosin has been composing and performing music for silent films for over 50 years, touring the world’s leading film festivals. The two have performed together hundreds of times so far. As Svigals says, “we offer the public the opportunity to experience a lost art form.”