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The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) // Silent film with live score by Paris 1919

Presented by The Parkway and Sound Unseen
Friday, May 30, 2025
7 pm Doors // 8 pm Music + Film 
All Ages

  • $15 ($20.21 w. taxes/fees) Advance General Admission

  • $20 ($23 w. taxes/fees) At The Door General Admission

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A rare screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) — the next installment of this unique film series pairing iconic silent films with original scores by celebrated composer Chris Strouth and performed by the musical collective, Paris 1919. Co-presented by Sound Unseen.

The Lodger is Hitchcock’s third film but his first thriller — and established his reputation as an esteemed British director. Upon its release, the journal Bioscope noted, “It is possible that this film is the finest British production ever made.” The Lodger is also the first film to feature Hitchcock in what became his signature cameo appearance. Based on a Jack-The-Ripper style plot, this film is also renowned for Hitchcock’s exquisite use of visual storytelling, incorporating elements of Art Deco and Avant Garde. 

The film will be live-scored with a performance featuring new work by Paris 1919, the musical collective of celebrated composer Chris Strouth and select Twin Cities musicians, including Natalie Nowytski (a classically-trained vocalist-turned-folk music geek who sings in 50+ languages and 12+ distinct vocal styles), guitarist Kent Militzer, and multi-instrumentalist David J. Russ

Chris Strouth’s roots as a musician and electronic artist go back to the 1980s, when he got his start as part of the punk art collective around Rifle Sport Gallery in downtown Minneapolis. Since then, he has become a producer, scenemaker, and composer of complex, immersive works, often written for large-scale ensembles or collectives such as Future Perfect Sound System and Paris 1919, with whom he has released four albums and an EP since 2011, most recently 2022's Future Archaeology.

 The music Strouth creates defies easy categorization and, as with many forms of art, sticking a label on it is perhaps unhelpful — to listeners and to the music itself. Instead, it transcends genre. DJ and electronic musician Kid Koala has praised Strouth's work as "sometimes futuristic, sometimes nostalgic, but always evocative, dwelling in a perfectly focused space between tranquility and chaos. It is the type of music that is a screenwriter's dream."

Paris 1919's music can be jaggedly buzzing and sinister, ethereal and serene, melancholy and stately. There is at times an almost science-fictional quality that seems to blend the mechanical with the organic. There are echoes of the industrial throb of Coil or Throbbing Gristle, Ennio Morricone's film score for The Thing, Enoesque ambience, the Red Room sequences in David Lynch's Twin Peaks, Pink Floyd's more cosmic psychedelia, silent-film innovator Georges Méliès, and more.

Still, if a genre label is needed, Strouth's emphasis on digital manipulation and sometimes dark, unsettling atmospherics congenially resonates with both modern neo-classical and ambient drone music, even if it won't fit neatly into any one box.

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