The Brighton Film Festival

Dir: Walter Ruttman. Germany 1927.

UK Premiere of a live score by Simon Fisher Turner, Klara Lewis and Rainier Lericolais, presented in partnership with Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts to mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Walter Ruttmann’s definitive ‘city film’ is a dawn to dusk portrait of 1920s Berlin, combining documentary, abstract and lyrical imagery. The era of industrialisation was at its peak; urban modernism had become a fashion. The ‘city symphony’ became a fully-fledged film genre, whose characters were the railway, the dance of the trams, the magic of electricity and the roar of automobiles. From this rapidly developing city arose a resounding combination of new sounds, given a new dimension by musicians Simon Fisher Turner, Klara Lewis and Rainier Lericolais.