Cinema Concert: The Strange Bird

Before the film, Friederike Grimm will present her new book *The Beginnings of the Star System: Asta Nielsen in Germany and Austria-Hungary 1911–1914*, and Simone Winkler will explore the film’s aesthetic approach to nature and its portrayal of the environment.

Live music: Mathias Weibel (electric violin, mandolin and other instruments), Emanuele Forni (electric guitar and other plucked instruments), Simon Lilly (trumpet, flugelhorn)

‘In this early silent film by Urban Gad, Asta Nielsen plays May, a sophisticated young Englishwoman who travels through the Spreewald with her father and a chaperone, delighting in the picturesque landscape. There she meets the local boatman Max, who instantly falls for the exotic stranger …” (Filmportal)

The ‘simple plot is (…) superbly developed psychologically, so that one hardly misses the spoken word. Compared to theatre, however, cinema has the advantage of lifelike staging: the rustling trees of the Spreewald, the marvellous reflections of light – the magical glow of the moonlight, the lapping of the water, the discovery of the body amongst the water lilies, and the idyllic farmhouses are particularly beautiful. All this can only be shown with such perfection in the cinema, but not in the theatre.” (Der Kinematograph, 8 November 1911)

We are screening the new colour restoration by the Deutsche Kinemathek