The Wind (1928)

New restoration, with live piano accompaniment by Tyler Stoner: a Fundraiser for the Pittsburgh Silent Film Society & Festival.

MoMA’s brand new digital restoration is based on two 35-millimeter prints acquired from M-G-M in the 1930s. Having only screened at MoMA this past year, this fundraiser event for the Pittsburgh Silent Film Society & Festival is otherwise the first opportunity for U.S. audiences to see this new restoration. Marking its third annual festival this fall, the screening will raise needed support for the Pittsburgh Silent Film Society & Festival, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, helping it to continue to grow and provide quality silent films with live musical accompaniment in the future.

Directed by Swedish filmmaker Victor Sjöström,The Wind is included in many Top 10 silent film lists by film historians, critics and fans alike. Set in the desert of western Texas, a frail young woman from the east (Lillian Gish, in one of the great performances of silent film) has been thrust against her will, totally unprepared for the desolation—physical, social, psychological—that awaits her. The assault is total and unrelenting - the exteriors were shot, under difficult conditions, in the Mojave Desert of southern California.. As the wind becomes unstoppable, the emotional pressure grows on Gish’s Letty, driving her relentlessly toward a once-unthinkable act.

Accompanying the film is Tyler Stoner, a pianist-composer from Ligonier, PA, who graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a BFA in Music Composition and a minor in Drama. There he studied music composition under Nancy Galbraith, and wrote and premiered works for a variety of chamber groups, including performances by contemporary music group NAT 28 and the CMU Philharmonic. Additionally he composed music for two animated short films Dragonfly and Cave Dream by Shopia Qin and Hannah Kim respectively. He performs in Pittsburgh with the band Little Gunpowder and recorded two albums with them. In March 2024 he composed and accompanied for the silent film, The Woman of Tomorrow (1914), considered to be the first Russian feminist film, as well as Peter Pan (1924) at Row House at the 2024 Pittsburgh Silent Film Festival.

Find more information about the Pittsburgh Film Society & Festival at www.pittsburghsilentfilmsociety.org & https://www.facebook.com/PittsburghSilentFilmSociety/.

Directed by Victor Sjöström

1928 | USA | English intertitles | DCP