Vanished World Series: The Man Without A World

Centerpiece Live Music Event with Alicia Svigals and Donald Sosin 

Centerpiece reception at 8:45 in the MacMillan Family Lobby

The Man Without a World is credited to the legendary (and imaginary) 1920s Soviet director Yevgeny Antinov. But the film is anything but old. In fact, Antinov is the creation of contemporary filmmaker Eleanor Antin, who made the film in 1991 as an homage to the silent era and a love letter to her mother, a former actress in the Yiddish theater of Poland. In a Polish shtetl at the turn of the 20th century, the villagers struggle with both the antisemitism of the wider world and political infighting within their own community. Against this backdrop, two star-crossed lovers — merchant’s daughter Rukheleh (Christine Berry) and impoverished Yiddish poet Zevi (Pier Marton) — seek happiness. But many obstacles come between them, including Rukheleh’s disapproving parents, Zevi’s dalliance with a seductive gypsy dancer (Antin), and the sufferings of Zevi’s younger sister, Sooreleh (Anna Henriques), traumatized by a sexual assault in her youth and now subjected to exorcism rituals by local religious zealots.

About the artists:

Alicia Svigals and Donald Sosin have been bringing audiences to their feet throughout the US and Europe with their unique and stirring violin and piano scores for Jewish-themed silent films. Sosin is one of the world’s top silent film musicians, and Svigals is the world’s leading klezmer violinist and a founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics.

Violinist/composer Alicia Svigals is the world’s leading klezmer fiddler and a founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics.  She has performed with and written for violinist Itzhak Perlman and has worked with the Kronos Quartet, playwrights Tony Kushner and Eve Ensler, poet Allen Ginsburg, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Debbie Friedman, and Chava Albershteyn.  In May 2023, Svigals was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters by the Jewish Theological Seminary for “extraordinary contributions to the arts and Jewish life.”  Svigals was awarded a Foundation for Jewish Culture commission for her original score to the 1918 film The Yellow Ticket and is a MacDowell fellow.  Her CD Fidl (1996) reawakened the klezmer fiddle tradition. Her newest CD is Beregovski Suite: Klezmer Reimagined, with jazz pianist Uli Geissendoerfer—an original take on long-lost Jewish music from Ukraine.

Pianist/composer Donald Sosin grew up in Rye, New York, and Munich. Sosin received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Denver Silent Film Festival, and the Best Original Film Score award from the 2022 Mystic Film Festival. He has performed his scores for silent films, often with his wife, singer/percussionist Joanna Seaton, at Lincoln Center, MoMA, BAM, the National Gallery, at major film festivals in New York, San Francisco, Telluride, Hollywood, Yorkshire, Pordenone, Bologna, Shanghai, Bangkok, Berlin, Vienna, Moscow, and Jecheon, South Korea and many college campuses. He has worked with Alexander Payne, Isabella Rossellini, Dick Hyman, Jonathan Tunick, Comden and Green, Martin Charnin, Mitch Leigh, and Cy Coleman, and has played for Mikhael Baryshnikov, Mary Travers, Marni Nixon, Howie Mandel, Geula Gill, and many others. He records for Criterion, Kino, Milestone, Flicker Alley, and European labels, and his scores are heard frequently on TCM. He has had commissions from MoMA, EYE Amsterdam, Deutsche Kinemathek, L’Immagine Ritrovata, the Chicago Symphony Chorus, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. He lives in rural Connecticut with his family.