On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of Babylon, the anniversary silent film LIVEfestival # 10 from the 29th of August to the 8th of September is dedicated to the year of its opening: 1929 - the last - and BEST - year of the silent film. Climax!
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29! Stummfilm Live Festival
Big opening on August 29th at 7.30 pm:
we will celebrate the German premiere of Dimitri Shostakovich's Composer's Cut of "The New Babylon" (OmeU, Admission: 25 Euro): The first masterpiece shortened by the Soviet censorship before its world premiere by about 30 minutes in full length and along with the unabridged movie. The images of the failed People's Liberation in Paris - in the style of a document. True drama. The original orchestral music by Dmitri Shostakovich. An era, an oratorio.
Berlin 1929: Dozens of people die in street battles with the police, fascists increasingly enter the political scene, the "Black Friday" on Wall Street hits the world economy, people dance to Foxtrot and Shimmy on the volcano in the Crisis mood of this year seething violently. The sex appeal of the "Golden Twenties" is on the Climax.
And that too: Near the "Alex", at the former Bülow Square, opened in 1929 as the newest and last Berlin silent movie cinema Babylon. A name made for this city and its time out of joint. A silent film cinema with orchestra pit, gold-framed canvas and large cinema organ. But the signs are on a change: From the US come the first sound films and thus replace the silent film and its musicians.
Berlin 2019. The Babylon is today one of the oldest and first addresses in terms of silent film. There are demonstrations with live music, there is the Saturday "silent movie at midnight" with free admission, there is for ten years the annual silent film live festival on changing topics (including Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, Vive La France, Soviet Filmavantgarde Live, America First).
Cinema organist Anna Vavilkina accompanies the films live and since this year also the Babylon Orchestra Berlin, which brings to life classics like "Metropolis" or "Nosferatu" in front of a sold-out house with great success.
Free admission (except for the opening): During the silentfilmLIVEfestival # 10 are a total of 30 international masterpieces, all musically unique and live interpreted to experience: With the 20s icon Louise Brooks ("Diary of a Lost", "The Box of Pandora "), With Greta Garbo (" The Kiss ") and Elisabeth Bergner (" Miss Else ") as well as Marlene Dietrich's last silent movie (" The woman you long for "). Anny Ondra is the star of the two early Hitchcock classics "Blackmail" and "The Manxman".
Famous directors: From the USA Josef von Sternberg's thriller "Thunderbolt", Frank Borzage's melodrama "Lucky Star", the Buster-Keaton comedy "Spite Marriage", Erich von Stroheim's "Queen Kelly".
From France and others Jean Renoir's "Le bled" and Jean Epstein's "Finis terrae", from Great Britain E.A. Dupont's "Picadilly" and Anthony Asquit's mystery thriller "A Cottage on Dartmoor", as well as an early adaptation by S.C. Doyles "The dog of Baskerville". Masterpieces of Soviet silent film such as "Arsenal" by Aleksandr Dovzhenko, "The New Babylon" by Grigori Kosinzew and Leonid Trauberg and "The General Line" by Grigory Aleksandrov. From Germany Fritz Lang's "Woman in the Moon", Joe May's urban romance "Asphalt" and Richard Oswald's long time as a lost "spring awakening" as an 80 minute fragment.
Free admission: After the success of last year's festivals "Vive la France" and "America First" (4500 visitors each), we expect more than 400 visitors per day with the Best Of of 1929 this year. This makes the silent movie Live Festival the biggest silent movie event in Berlin.
