Have you ever seen a silent film accompanied by a choir? Tonight is a very special night: a rarely seen silent masterpiece accompanied by 2 live bands who've composed music especially for tonight: the legendary Noize Choir and Wax Magnetic.

Silent Film: The Golem, How He Came into the World (1920, dir. Paul Wegener and Carl Boese)

Director Paul Wegener made, and starred in, three Golem films, but this is the only one that remains. This film is a retelling of the Golem legend in which a rabbi in 16th-century Prague sculpts a massive monster from clay to defend the Jewish community. In this movie, the Golem, after initially fulfilling its duty, falls under the influence of a demon and embarks on a violent rampage through the ghetto. The ending, when it comes, is an absolute classic, and surprisingly heartwarming for such an out-and-out experiment in fear.

Majestic scale and Expressionist Style

Vast sets designed by architect Hans Poelzig and cinematography by the legendary Karl Freund give The Golem an appropriately majestic sense of scale, and sharp, expressionist style. The lumbering Golem with an unexpected tender side, as played shiftily by Wegener, is the forerunner of many a cinematic Frankenstein’s monster. That the shem in the Golem’s chest that awakens him will also remind 2013 viewers of the Marvel Iron Man franchise can’t be denied.

Tale inspired by Jewish Folklore

In Jewish folklore, a golem is an animated anthropomorphic being, created entirely from inanimate matter. The most famous golem narrative involves Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the late-16th-century rabbi of Prague. There are many tales differing on how the Golem was brought to life and afterwards controlled.

+ Live Music from Noize Choir and Wax Magnetic

Noize Choir and Wax Magnetic have collaborated to compose a unique soundtrack especially for the film tonight.

-/-/-/-/-/ Noize Choir -/-/-/-/-/

Noize Choir is a unique choir that has gathered a very strong following in very little time. It does not only sing: it makes noises and hisses and hushes and even sometimes uses buckets for better sound.

The Noize Choir was formed in Newcastle by a loose collective of noise enthusiasts with a mission to use the human voice in large group settings of varying configurations but free of the traditional restraints of typical choral settings, language or music notation.

Inviting the submission of visual scores and exploring the full range of the human voice as not just a vessel of song but almost an organic synthesizer, the Choir are equally happy with buckets on their heads, performing in holes in the ground or giving their own unique response to Janet Cardiff’s Forty Part Motet.

You can see a video explaining their work here: http://vimeo.com/33840817

-/-/-/-/-/ Wax Magnetic -/-/-/-/-/

Wax Magnetic is the Newcastle-based duo of turntable improvisor Mariam Rezaei and tape/voice mangler Joe Murray aka Posset. Introduced by mutual friend Rhodri Davies, behind-closed-doors experiments unearthed rich common pastures shared by Rezaei’s liquid stylus cut-ups and Murray’s glottal scrapes that have recently found a home on Chocolate Monk and elsewhere. Seeing them perform at the Mopomoso show in Newcastle earlier this year, we couldn’t detect where vinyl ended and tape began, a true melding of minds and a rich menu of sonics that left us with a wide smile on our ears.

TICKETS

Advance tickets: £5/£3.50 (conc) available here: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/265144

Tickets on the door: £6/£5 (conc)

Supported by the BFI, Part of the BFI Gothic Season

This show will also be taking place in Sunderland on 6 April 2014, in Poprecs.