»Ost und West« | Alicia Svigals & Donald Sosin

In the organizer's words:

Between 1919 and 1925, a number of films tailored to a Jewish audience were made in Austria, including this remarkable comedy in which Eastern Orthodox and Western assimilated Jewry clash. Molly and her father, a millionaire who has emigrated to the USA, have traveled to Poland for the wedding of a close relative. The young, lively woman, who puts on her boxing gloves in her free time, has virtually nothing to do with tradition and the simple life in the shtetl - misunderstandings are inevitable. OST UND WEST was filmed in the Listo Film studio with the participation of numerous actors from the Freie Jüdische Volksbühne in Vienna.

Accompanied by original music by the world-famous violinist Alicia Svigals and the celebrated pianist Donald Sosin in live performance.

Alicia Svigals, violinist, composer and co-founder of the Grammy award-winning Klezmatics, is the world's leading klezmer violinist. She has almost single-handedly revived the tradition of klezmer violin playing, which was threatened with extinction until the recording of her debut album "Fidi" in the 1990s. Svigals has performed with and composed for violinist Itzhak Perlman and collaborated with the Kronos Quartet, playwrights Tony Kushner and Eve Ensler, poet Allen Ginsberg, Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, Debbie Friedman and Chava Albershteyn. She was commissioned by the Foundation for Jewish Culture for her original music for the 1918 film THE YELLOW TICKET and is a MacDowell Fellow. In February 2018, Svigals and jazz pianist Uli Geissendoerfer released BEREGOVSKI SUITE, their fantasy of klezmer melodies drawn from the archive of early 20th century Soviet Jewish ethnomusicologist Moshe Beregovski. In May 2023, Svigals was awarded an honorary doctorate in humanities by the Jewish Theological Seminary for "extraordinary contributions to art and Jewish life". In June 2024, she released her latest album, FIDL AFIRE, on the Borscht Beat label - a return to her roots with a full party band. In August 2024, she was awarded the 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Folk and Traditional Arts.

Donald Sosin is a composer, arranger, pianist and conductor. He grew up in Rye, New York, and Munich, Germany. He worked on Broadway for fifteen years and has been composing music for and accompanying silent films since 1971. He has performed throughout the United States, including venues such as Lincoln Center, MoMA and the Kennedy Center, as well as at major film festivals in Telluride, San Francisco, Europe and Asia, with regular appearances in Bologna and Pordenone. Sosin records for the Criterion, Kino, Milestone and Flicker Alley labels, as well as for Deutsche Kinemathek, Lobster Films and Arte, and has been commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Chorus, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. A significant part of his work is dedicated to Jewish themes. He has performed film scores for works such as JEWISH LUCK, BREAKING HOME TIES and THREE WOMEN at the New York Jewish Film Festival. Together with Alicia Svigals, he wrote film scores for OST UND WEST (1923), DAS ALTE GESETZ (1923), DIE STADT OHNE JUDEN (1924) and THE MAN WITHOUT A WORLD (1990), which were performed internationally. His Jewish-influenced compositions also include Yiddish song arrangements, the Shabbat cantata SHIR HADASH (1974), the operas ESTHER and A PARAKEET NAMED DREIDEL as well as THREE PSALMS FOR ORCHESTRA (2009).

Tickets at: https://cinematheque-leipzig.de/programm/filme/ost-und-west/