Pandora's Box

with music from The Monroe Transfer

Filmmaker: G.W. Pabst

Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Francis Lederer

Germany / 1929 / 131min

NFT1 Wed 11 Mar 6pm

Iconic and capricious Louise Brooks leads this silent classic, accompanied for the first time by 7 piece band The Monroe Transfer.

Free-spirited and luminous Lulu affects those around her like a flame attracting moths. When her affair with distinguished society man Dr Schön becomes public, he marries her. But even on his wedding day he is enraged by jealousy, with disastrous coincidences.

Brooks’ most captivating performance as a capricious vamp, in a film notorious for its frank depiction of modern sexual mores.  

Louise Brooks

With her iconic black helmet, hypnotic beauty and natural acting style, Brooks was perfectly suited the new vogue of close-ups. A strikingly modern vamp with a sharp intellect, Brooks kept control of her role and often self-directed.

The Monroe Transfer

The Monroe Transfer are a UK-based, 7-piece group, making beautifully detailed and passionately executed instrumental music on a variety of instruments, including viola, violin, 'cello, double bass, guitars, drums, samples, keyboards, electronics and samples. Forthcoming releases include a unique CD & DVD double-pack of their 20 minute piece I dreamt I was a hammer & everything was glass, featuring animated film by Gemma Burditt to be released on Organ Grinder Records.

Read about the weird and wonderful instruments that The Monroe Transfer will be incorporating into their musical performance, on their website here.

"At their most beautiful they're able to lightly brush the places that so few other instrumental acts can...it's exciting when a band that features not a single singer is able to take you away to someplace other than the here and now on fabulous waves of orchestral sound. The Monroe Transfer, at their most beautiful, are that band." - Drowned in Sound

For venues and booking info click here