The Webster Film Series is set to show a rare historic treat, an unusual and artistic silent film, “The Man Without a World” by legendary Soviet silent movie director Yevgeny Antinov, with live musical accompaniment by acclaimed Klezmer fiddler Alicia Svigals, with a score composed by renowned composer Donald Sosin.
Except not all of that is exactly true.
The silent movie that purports to be by a legendary Soviet director is actually a fictional film by a contemporary director. What is true is there will be live music performed by Svigals, of the award-winning the Klezmatics, and the gifted composer Sosin.
This “historic” film is actually the creation of contemporary filmmaker and performance artist Eleanor Antin. Yevgeny Antinov never really existed, except as the alter-ego of Eleanor Fineman Antin, a renowned Bronx-born, Jewish-American artist whose works have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Whitney Museum of American Art and Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art.
Marton is former Washington University professor of film and a current filmmaker and “un-learning” teacher at the School of No Media, whose work is in the collection of MoMA, the Paris Beaubourg Museum and the Mémorial de la Shoah, Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum and Toronto’s National Gallery of Canada. His father, Ervin Marton, was a renowned photographer in post-World War II Paris, who as a Hungarian Jewish student in Paris, was caught there when the Nazis marched in. Ervin Marton became a member of the French Resistance and, after the war, a renowned photographer who was part of the Paris arts scene.
“The delicate balance of light and darkness are part of the legacy of Yiddish cinema and theater as well as of Roman Vishniac’s shtetl photographs. A feast for the eyes, the ears (with the virtuoso musician-composers, Sosin and Svigals live), and the heart,” Marton said. “The richness of New York’s Jewish luminaries, artists and poets, transplanted to San Diego, shine throughout the film.”
Marton encouraged readers to look into some important Jewish artists in the cast: Jerome Rothenberg, Allan Kaprow and the late Newton Harrison.
Rothenberg is an internationally renowned poet, critic and performance artist.
Kaprow is an American painter and performer who invented the name “Happening” [in the 1960s] and created the genre of live and experimental art,” according to Britannica.
Harrison was a founder of the Eco-Art Movement, who was praised in his New York Times obituary for creating, along with his wife, Helen Mayer Harrison, work that blended marine biology, agriculture, urban planning and activism and that tackled, early on, the effects of climate change.
“The Man Without a World” at the Webster Film Series
When: 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 27
Where: Winifred Moore Auditorium, 470 E. Lockwood Ave.
How much: $12
More info: The 1992 silent film has English inter-titles and runs 98 minutes. The new score will be performed is live by Donald Sosin on piano and Alicia Svigals on violin. Filmmaker Pier Marton of University City helped make and performs in the film, and will be in attendance to discuss it.
