Pittsburgh Silent Film Festival: Michael (1924)

Co-presented with Reel Q and featuring live piano accompaniment by Sean Allen Spencer!

Danish film master Carl Theodor Dreyer’s homoerotic classic is a mature and visually elegant period romance decades ahead of its time. A sensitive and compassionate portrayal of gay romance, this novel adaptation refashions the Greek myth of Jupiter and Ganymede into a love triangle. Aging artist Zoret’s (Benjamin Christensen) yearning for his longtime model Michael (Walter Slezak) reaches new dizzying heights when Princess Zamikoff (Nora Gregor) becomes entranced with Michael’s beauty.

Michael takes its place alongside Dreyer’s better known masterpieces as an unusually sensitive and decorous work of art and is one of the earliest and most compassionate overtly gay-themed films in movie history. Collaborating with famed German cinematographers Karl Freund (Metropolis, The Last Laugh) and Rudolph Maté (Passion of Joan of Arc, DOA) Michael offers the first fully realized example of Dreyer's emotionally precise, visually extravagant style.

About the musicican: Sean Alan Spencer is a producer and composer from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. His early years studying music theory, exploring a fascination with soundtracks, and experimenting in contemporary composition have led him down an eclectic and consistently evolving journey of musical expression. He has performed in groups from a wide variety of genres, including Blue Hour (Jam/Americana) Savvy (Funk/Jazz), Mr. GRIZZLY (Progressive Rock), Azure Wolf (Indie Rock), and Reel Talk (Neo-80s), as well as solo under the moniker Hello Journal. He is currently set to release his second full length, self-produced album this year alongside co-creator and fellow Pittsburgh resident Victoria Backle under their band Chaperones.

Directed by Carl Theodore Dreyer

Rated NR