Silent Movie Night
with live music from Darius Battiwalla: organ, piano
Sunday October 27 7.30pm £12/£8/£4 (u18) BUY TICKETS
The Adventurer (with Charlie Chaplin)
One Day (with Buster Keaton)
The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari
Organist and pianist Darius Battiwalla took up the post of Leeds City Organist in 2017, programming the very successful Town Hall recital series and giving regular solo concerts. He is currently overseeing the renewal of the Leeds Town Hall organ. Recent performances include the recitals at the Cathedrals of Coventry, Lincoln, Ripon, and St Albans, and this year sees appearances with Collegium Vocale Gent in Ghent and Amsterdam, and the annual recital for the Royal College of Organists conferment of diplomas. Darius teaches improvisation at the Royal Academy of Music, and is teaching on this year’s Royal College of Organists summer course.
Darius has been increasingly in demand as a silent film accompanist on both organ and piano. After a sell-out performance of Nosferatu in 2009 at the Sheffield Festival, he has accompanied Phantom of the Opera, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde on the organ, and on the piano has played for the premieres of the newly restored Helen of Four Gates. For several years he played for a monthly series of films at the National Media Museum, and he makes regular appearances at the Leeds International Film Festival, and has also appeared at the Mayfield Festival, Deer Shed Festival, and many other venues throughout the UK.
“Improvisation extraordinaire..” Artsdesk review of Phantom of the Opera.
The Adventurer
This short – one of Chaplin’s most entertaining ’two-reel’ films – is a real showcase for Charlie Chaplin’s energetic visual comedy. Playing an escaped convict who has infiltrated his way into a high-society social gathering, he uses both physical and mental trickery to avoid detection – almost successfully.
One Week
A Buster Keaton short film which will resonate with anyone who has wrestled with self-assembly furniture – but here it’s an entire house which comes flat-packed, and made even more difficult when all the components have been deliberately re-numbered. Some ingenious visual comedy and a surprise at the end.
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
This classic of German expressionist cinema features deliberately distorted and disproportionate sets, and unreal styles of costume and acting, to create a deeply unsettling film. It tells the story of a sinister hypnotist who uses a sleepwalker to commit murders, but as the film progresses the line between reality and delusion becomes increasingly blurred.