Admission: $24 General/$22 Cinematheque Members
Event Tickets here
presented in association with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Rebirth of a Nation
Live music by DJ Spooky and Classical Revolution with Guenter Buchwald
Paul D. Miller’s (DJ Spooky) live remix of the 1915 film that mythologized the slave-holding South debuted as a work-in-progress at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival more than twenty years ago and remains even more relevant today. By deconstructing then reassembling The Birth of a Nation (1915, Dir. D.W. Griffith) into a more truthful history, Miller demonstrates the awesome power of cinema right before our eyes.
Paul D. Miller will be in conversation with Wesley Morris of the New York Times following the performance.
Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky, is an artist and composer with an affinity for silent film. In 2004 he premiered his live remix of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation—Rebirth of a Nation—at New York’s Lincoln Center and has composed for Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s Earth (1930) and Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), among others. He executive-produced the Pioneers of African-American Cinema box set for The Criterion Collection, which features his scores for two films by Oscar Micheaux.
Classical Revolution is an ensemble of classically-trained musicians who perform in non-traditional venues. Led by violist Charith Premawardhana, the group includes Anthony Blea, Joey Chang and Sascha Jacobsen
Conductor, composer, pianist and violinist Guenter Buchwald is a pioneer of the renaissance in silent film music. He has accompanied silent films for thirty-eight years with a repertoire of more than three thousand titles and has conducted orchestras worldwide from Iceland to Romania, Tokyo to Zurich. He is cofounder of the Silent Movie Music Company and is musical director of Bristol’s Slapstick Silent Film Festival in England.