Silent film classics from Arte - cineastic musical highlights for your audience

At the beginning of the 20th century, film was the driving force behind the cultural awakening into the modern age. Silent cinema opened up a new space for information and entertainment, offering everything from slapstick comedy, salon and historical dramas to science fiction. Cinema music was correspondingly diverse. Even in the silent film era, there were passionate debates about which music was appropriate for the new medium, with composers such as Paul Hindemith, Richard Strauss and Arnold Schönberg contributing epochal film scores to the great artistic awakening.
But that's not all: today, the film strips, most of which are over 100 years old, are valuable time capsules that allow us to immerse ourselves in the social and cultural worlds of the early 20th century in a fascinating way.

With its silent film series, ARTE has been documenting the diversity of this European and international cinema culture for over 25 years with some spectacular rediscoveries. Elaborately restored and newly set to music, the artfully produced films from the early days of the film industry demonstrate their relevance for today's themes and emotions - as a vibrant and living cultural heritage.

The new settings commissioned by ARTE by representatives of the younger generation of composers such as Brigitta Muntendorf, Marta Kowalczuk, Sara Glojnarić, Malte Giesen, Felix Kubin, Tobias Schwencke and Andreas Eduardo Frank are just as eye- (and ear-)catching as the congenial reconstructions of historical original music by Giuseppe Becce, Josef Weiss and Edmund Meisel by composers such as Detlev Glanert and Bernd Thewes. Adoptions of internationally acclaimed silent film scores by leading composers of today's concert and theater scene - such as Olga Neuwirth, Elena Kats-Chernin, Johannes Kalitzke, Philippe Schoeller or Martin Smolka - set standards. Their innovative compositional ideas and the targeted integration of live electronics expand the range of tonal expression of classical music and open up new resonance spaces.

With ARTE CINE CONCERT, ARTE also makes an important contribution to the cultivation of European and international film cultural heritage outside of its TV and online program. In typical ARTE fashion, it opens up a dialog between past and present, moves, inspires and opens up new perspectives - for cineastes and concert audiences alike.