Silent Film, Loud Music: Berlin: Symphony of a Great City

Dir. by Walter Ruttmann
Germany, 1927
53 min.
Silent film with English intertitles

This August, join us on the lawn outside of Comfort Station for classic German silent films paired with live musical accompaniment by Chicago musicians! Logan Square microcinema Comfort Film presents this year's installment of 'Silent Film, Loud Music' in partnership with the Goethe-Institut Chicago. All screenings begin at sunset.

Walter Ruttmann’s landmark city symphony transforms a day in the life of Weimar-era Berlin into a percussive visual poem. Beginning with the arrival of a morning train and concluding in nightfall, the film’s five-act structure follows the metropolis from dawn to dusk, capturing the pulsing energy of urban modernity through dazzling montage sequences. Cinematographer Karl Freund’s roving camera moves fluidly through factories, boulevards, café es, and nightclubs, capturing the mechanical rhythms and social strata of a city in transformation. Neither strictly documentary nor avant-garde experiment, Ruttmann’s masterpiece synthesizes abstract formalism with documentary observation, creating a hypnotic portrait of industrial society that influenced generations of filmmakers from Dziga Vertov to Godfrey Reggio.


ABOUT THE ARTIST

Holy Taker is a dark folk ensemble created by Jude Lake to explore God in all its forms. Expanding beyond the more traditional structure of the band's music, Lake and composer/performer Riley Leitch weave this divine searching into experimental soundscapes, anchored by organ and trombone.