A silent film double-bill of The Mothering Heart (D. W. Griffith, 1913) and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F. W. Murnau, 1927) will be presented on Saturday, Sept. 23, at 7:30 p.m., in Lincoln Theater with live piano accompaniment by Patrick Miller. Admission is free. The screening is a celebration of renowned performances by two distinguished American silent film actresses portraying dramatic redemption.
The Mothering Heart is an elaborate Biograph short film released in 1913 and directed by pioneering American director D. W. Griffith. The picture is a star vehicle for Lillian Gish (1893-1993), “First Lady of the American Screen," who gives a tour-de-force performance, which established her as a formidable artist of early world cinema.
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, directed by the ingenious German director F. W. Murnau, is a revolutionary Fox feature released in 1927. The extraordinary film continues to astonish audiences with its mesmerizing beauty and award-winning dramatic performance by Janet Gaynor (1906-1984).
Patrick Miller, Professor Emeritus, Music Theory, taught at The Hartt School, University of Hartford for 40 years. A music theorist and classical pianist, he studied at the University of Kansas (BMus, MMus) and the University of Michigan (PhD). Since 1982, he has performed his improvised symphonic-style piano accompaniments for silent film screenings at colleges, universities, and museums across New England. He has studied silent film history and music at the George Eastman Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Library of Congress, and has accompanied the masterworks of American and international silent cinema.