Cine-concert City Without Jews

City Without Jews / Orașul fără evrei, r. Hans Karl Breslauer, Austria, 1924

Original Music and Live Performance: Alicia Svigals and Donald Sosin

Based on the novel by journalist and writer Hugo Bettauer, "The City Without Jews" tells a story whose implications remain as relevant as they were at the time of its premiere a hundred years ago. In a fictional city in Austria, Utopia, the authorities decide to expel all Jews from the country. What follows is an economic and cultural decline that leads the proponents of the new law to question their decisions.

Although the original copy of the film was considered lost, it was serendipitously found in 2015 at a flea market in Paris and restored by the Austrian Film Archive. In 2020, Alicia Svigals and Donald Sosin composed the original music entirely from scratch.

Violinist and composer Alicia Svigals has an impressive list of collaborations, from violinist Itzhak Perlman to Kronos Quartet and Led Zeppelin, and is the founder of the Klezmatics, which won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album in 2007. Donald Sosin has been creating and performing music for silent films for over 50 years, touring the world's most important film festivals. The two have performed together hundreds of times.