20 February brings the 1925 silent film classic The Tower of Silence to Kyiv with a new live score accompaniment composed by Serhiy Leontyev, finalist of the Envision Sound 2018 project and performed by the Sed Contra Ensemble.
The Tower of Silence (Der Turm des Schweigens, Germany, 1925) is one of a limited number of surviving films by Johannes Guter and starring Ksenia Desni, a Ukrainian actress from the town of Oster near Kyiv. In 1921, Desni – famous as “Dada” – signed a contract with German film studio monolith UFA and in 1924 acted in the film Leap Into Life in which an as-yet-unknown Marlene Dietrich also appeared. Desni’s fame grew in Europe leading to stardom in German cinema of the late-1920s.
The film’s reimagined musical accompaniment is the work of Serhiy Leontyev, a Ukrainian composer who has worked in feature, documentary and animated film. His musical composition interests range across the genres of instrumental chamber music, symphonic and electronic music and small choral ensemble, and have been performed in France, Austria, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, China and Ukraine. The Sed Contra Ensemble will perform Leontyev’s composition during the screening.
This event is part of the Envision Sound educational programme for cinematic score composers and has been organised jointly by the British Council in Ukraine and the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre.