When rampant income and class disparities are an acceptable symptom of economic progress, when shareholders profit from the plight of the worker, when conditions can no longer be tolerated, there is only one option: Strike | a film by Sergei Eisenstein, presented with live musical accompaniment.
In their latest performance, the Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra Minnesota (R&P MPO) turn their sights away from the pioneering comedic works of Buster Keaton to explore the darker side of silent film in Sergei Eisenstein’s Strike (1925). In this seminal work, Eisenstein offers a captivating post-revolutionary critique of tsarist Russia that employs masterful camerawork and cutting visual metaphor to illustrate the utter despair endured by the working class. To complement this incredible film, R&P MPO will perform an original musical score live during the screening.
About the film:
Strike chronicles a group of factory workers as they struggle against an oppressive regime of shareholders in an effort to improve working conditions. After a confrontation with management results in the death of an innocent man, the workers riot and vacate the factory, officially setting the stage for a strike. Living in a corrupt and autocratic tsarist Russia, the striking workers face insurmountable odds. Only organization and unity of action keep their cause alive.
About the performers:
Originating in St. Louis, the Rats & People Motion Picture Orchestra employs a perspective that films of the Silent Era are not dusty museum pieces, but rather vital and urgently relevant works of art. The ensemble consciously eschews the styles that dominated early film accompaniment--often the popular tunes of the time--in observance of the century of popular music that has since shaped the contemporary ear. Performing all original music, the R&P MPO is a contemporary motion picture orchestra serving a contemporary audience, imbuing the film narratives with a genuinely complementary and supportive aural accompaniment.
Friday June 6 at 10:00pm (doors 9:30) $10