A cinephilac blog about an actress, silent film, and the Jazz Age, with occasional posts about related books, music, art, and history written by Thomas Gladysz. Visit the Louise Brooks Society™ at www.pandorasbox.com
Included on the embedded image below are the remaining dates on Wurlitza's Diary of a Lost Girl tour. Wurlitza performs tonight, February 28th at The Zone in Downberry, England.
You can learn more about the band and their music by checking out the previous post on this Louise Brooks Society blog, by visiting the band's Facebook page, or listening to their soundtrack via Soundcloud. The band and their new CD were also the subject of an article in a local newspaper, the Plymouth Herald, and website, Tuned Cornwall.
Wurlitza, a five piece band from South East Cornwall (in the UK), have released a CD featuring their new soundtrack to the 1929 Louise Brooks' film, Diary of a Lost Girl. The band has been specializing in adding live soundtracks to silent films since 2006.
Here is what the band's website says about their new release: "New for 2014, after two years in the making, is Wurlitza’s soundtrack for GW Pabst’s 1929 movie Diary of a Lost Girl. Fast moving and at times shocking, Diary of a Lost Girl traces the story of Thymian, played by the mesmerising screen idol Louise Brooks, as her life yoyos between episodes of lightness and innocence, darkness and despair. Moments of great comedy involve life in a reform school for fallen girls headed by a villainous nun, and a modern dance lesson with an incompetent buffoon. This gripping film defies convention, confounding expectations as joy and compassion are found in the most unlikely places. Repertoire for the soundtrack of Diary of a Lost Girl includes music by Django Reinhardt, Fun Boy Three, Portishead, Wire, Chopin, Leonard Cohen, Madonna and Grace Jones."
The new CD is available now. Recorded live at Goodmerry Farm Studios in Cornwall, it features 20 tracks from Wurlitza's Diary of A Lost Girl soundtrack. It will be on sale at upcoming performances (see list below), or you can order by post by emailing to wurlitza@wurlitza.co.uk. £8 (+£2 p+p). The band also accepts PayPal.
Saturday 28th February 2015 - Diary of a Lost Girl. A Film Kitchen event in association with Carn to Cove at The Zone, Downderry, Cornwall.
Saturday 14th March 2015 - Diary of a Lost Girl. A Calstock Arts event at The Old Chapel, Calstock, Cornwall
Sunday 22nd March 2015 - Diary of a Lost Girl. Wadebridge Cinema, Cornwall. 7:30pm.
You can learn more about the band and their music on their Facebook page, or listen to the soundtrack via Soundcloud. You can also listen below.
Band members are Dave Stroud - bass guitar; Lizzy Stroud - piano/keyboard, clarinet, vocals; Lil Lanyon - guitar, vocals; Claire Abbott - drums/percussion, vocals.
The Revue Cinema in Toronto, Canada has announced it will be screening the classic 1928 silent, Beggars of Life, on Sunday, March 8th. The film, which will be shown with live musical accompaniment at 4:15 pm, stars Louise Brooks. Here is what the Revue Cinema website says:
"Celebrate International Women's Day in style with our ultra-rare screening of Beggars of Life starring Louise Brooks (1928), starring the silent era's most memorable rebel, Louise Brooks!
Brooks plays Nancy, who, on the lam after killing her abusive guardian, disguises her identity in hope of escaping to Canada. Tucking those signature bangs under a cap (don't worry -- they fall out from time to time) she passes as a boy among a gang of rail-riding hobos, where the threat of being revealed a killer takes a back seat to a more pressing danger: being exposed as a woman!
Co-starring Wallace Beery and Richard Arlen, Beggars of Life is frequently cited as Brooks's best American film, and under the direction of "Wild Bill" Wellman (Wings), it is no wonder.
See it the way it was meant to be seen - at the historic Revue Cinema with live musical accompaniment performed by Jordan Klapman.
Beggars of Life is preceded by the short film Suspense (1913), directed by one cinema's greatest pioneers, Lois Weber.
This special event is part of 'IT GIRLS: Sirens of the Silent Screen', Silent Revue’s on-going tribute to the first ladies of Hollywood.
The George Eastman House in Rochester, New York has announced it will be screening the classic 1929 German silent, Pandora's Box, on April 21st. The film, which will be shown in the Dryden Theater at 8pm, stars Louise Brooks as Lulu. Here is what the GEH website says:
(Die Büchse der Pandora, Georg Wilhelm Pabst, Germany 1929, 133 min., 35mm)
"For James Card, there was only one
Louise Brooks. The cineaste referred to his lifelong infatuation as an
emotional devotion that had begun at the age of 14, calling Brooks an
inadvertent femme fatale who could in no way be coquettish or even
deliberately seductive—ideal for the role of Lulu in Pandora’s Box,
heroine of Frank Wedekind’s beloved German plays. An innocently immoral
sexual predator, Lulu discards and destroys men as she tries to get
ahead, until she meets Jack the Ripper. The steamy story is a tangled
web of intrigue and deception—the camera work, sets, and direction
brilliantly economical, powerfully simple."
“Pabst’s was the keyhole system: I’ll put your eye to the
keyhole—become a voyeur of this scene and make of it what you will. A
viewer is forced to participate intellectually in a Pabst film.” – James
Card
The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Littleton, Colorado has announced it will screen the classic 1929 German silent, Pandora's Box,
on February 21st. That's today! The film, which will be shown with live musical accompaniment at 4 pm, stars Louise Brooks as Lulu.
The presentation of this unrated silent film has an age policy: "18 and up; Children 6 and up will be allowed only with a parent guardian. No children under the age of 6 will be allowed."
Here is what the Alamo Drafthouse website says:
"This 35mm screening of PANDORA'S BOX will feature live in-theater score provided by the great and talented Paul Buscarello!
Haunting. Lurid. Sensual. G.W. Pabst's tale of a much-sought after socialite would prove to be only partly fictional, as young actress Louise Brooks was also swept up in the roaring lifestyle of her generation. It's powerful in its depiction of sexuality on screen, but delivered deceitfully by the alluring and magnetic Brooks. Easily one of the greatest films of early German film making, PANDORA'S BOX is more than essential- it's foundational. (Steve Bessette)"
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This screening received a more than four minute review by Howie Movshovitz on the local NPR affiliate, KUNC. "It's rare for a commercial movie theater to show a silent film, and even
more rare that the film will be shown with live music. But Saturday, Feb. 21, at the Alamo Draft House in Littleton, one of the most beautiful – and lurid – movies of the silent period, Pandora's Box, will screen on actual 35mm film accompanied by a young musician and composer Paul Buscarello." Listen HERE.
Both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported on William Kentridge's new production of Lulu and the new season at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. The WSJ said this:
In November, the Met will debut a new staging of Alban Berg ’s “Lulu,” directed by South African visual artist William Kentridge, whose 2010 version of Shostakovich’s “The Nose” for the Met drew admiring reviews. Soprano Marlis Petersen will sing the title role of the scheming man-magnet Lulu, a part she has performed in prior productions in the U.S. and Europe. “She is the leading Lulu of the day,” said Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager. The new production will incorporate projections of drawings by Mr. Kentridge, as did “The Nose.” Like Marc Chagall, who designed scenery for the Met in the 1960s, Mr. Kentridge is “this wonderful kind of intermediary between the visual art world and the operatic world,” Mr. Gelb said.
The opera will be conducted by James Levine, the Met’s music director, who first introduced “Lulu” to the company in the 1970s.
Marlis Petersen as Lulu. PHOTO: KRISTIAN SCHULLER/METROPOLITAN OPERA
