The Yellow Ticket, a 1918 silent film, starred legendary actress Pola Negri and was made in Europe before Negri became a Hollywood star. The film tells the story of a young Jewish woman from a Polish shtetl who, due to anti-Semitic laws, is constrained to lead a double life in a brothel while attending medical school in Tsarist Russia. The film is surprising in its themes, raising fascinating questions, and includes rare footage of the Jewish quarter of Warsaw. Violinist Alicia Svigals has composed a new live score for the film, which she will perform at the screening along with Canadian jazz pianist Marilyn Lerner.
Composer/musician Alicia Svigals is the world’s leading klezmer violinist and a founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics, which she co-directed for seventeen years. She has written for violinist Itzhak Perlman, the Kronos Quartet, playwright Tony Kushner, documentary filmmaker Judith Helfand, singer/songerwriters Debbie Friedman, Diane Birch et al, and has collaborated with them as a performer and improviser as well as with poet Allen Ginsburg, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Gary Lucas and Najma Akhtar, and many others. She has appeared on David Letterman, MTV, Good Morning America, PBS’ Great Performances, on NPR’s Prairie Home Companion, Weekend Edition and New Sounds, and on the soundtrack for the L-Word.
This program is a collaboration of professors of modern languages and literatures Leo Riegert (German) and Natasha Olshanskaya (Russian) and the Gund Gallery.
Co-sponsors: Modern Languages and Literatures, Religious Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, Music, The Office of the Provost, Hillel, The Kenyon Review
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