Silent Nights to contemporary tunes

Organizers have announced program of the 5th Festival of Silent Films and Contemporary Music Silent Nights. This year, it is dedicated to ethnic, sexual, and religious tolerance. Traditionally, the shows will take place on the dock of the Yacht Club (June 27-28) and in the exhi­bition hall of the Odesa Passenger Port (June 29). The program of the fifth forum is the most colorful and exotic over its entire existence and features a tangible Oriental accent, i-pro.kiev.ua notes.

Japanese films The Scent of Pheasant’s Eye: An Episode from the Tale of Flowers (1927) and early anime Taro’s Toy Train (1929), accompanied by a traditional benshi performance of Japanese actor Ichiro Kataoka, will be the centerpiece of the first day. Kataoka will also accompany showing of a recently discovered Buster Keaton’s American comedy Smith (1922). All three films will be performed to music played by jazz virtuoso improviser Yurii Kuznetsov.

Early comedy by Alexander Dovzhenko Love’s Berries, filmed in Odesa in 1926 and achieving extremely good box office figures for the time, will be accompanied by jazz music of FKP trio (Odesa).

The charming Louise Brooks will be the star of June 28, as the audience will watch the most erotic film of the 1920s, German director Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s Pandora’s Chest (1928). The movie will be accompanied by Kuznetsov’s music. The experimental French melodrama by Dimitri Kirsanoff Menilmontant (1926), accompanied by Belarusian accordionist Yegor Zabelov, will bring some lyricism to the festival’s second day.

The third day of the festival will be de­dicated to the 70th anniversary of the deportation of Crimean Tatars and open with showing of the first Crimean Tatar film Alim. The film was created at the Yalta Cinema Factory of the All-Ukrai­nian Photo and Cinema Office in 1926 by Heor­hii Tasin. It will be accompanied by guitarist virtuoso Enver Izmaylov.

The forum will conclude with moving psychological drama The Last Command (1928) by American film director Joseph von Sternberg, which will be accompanied by American trio Alloy Orchestra, one of the world’s most famous bands to perform for silent films.

This year’s festival is dedicated to the great actors of the silent cinema: Crimean Tatar actor and poet Hayri Emir-Zade, American sex idol Louise Brooks, and outstanding actress Joan Crawford, whose centennial the world celebrates this year. It is her portrait that has become the face of the festival Silent Nights 2014.

Let us recall that the festival, founded in 2010 by the Ivan and Yurii Lypa Charitable Foundation, will be held this year as part of the Constitution of Ukraine Day ce­le­brations, supported by the State Cinema Agency, the Development of Ukraine Cha­ritable Foundation, the Alexander Dov­zhen­ko National Center, Odesa Regional State Administration, and Odesa City Council. Partners of the festival are the US Embassy in Ukraine, the French Institute, and the British Council in Kyiv.