This Saturday 21 June at 5pm: the silent film The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) presented with the soundtrack improvised by acclaimed Sydney-based organist David Drury.
Tickets $20 https://www.trybooking.com/CZYYF
Come along for this unique experience of Victor Hugo’s dark classic, exploring the human capacity for cruelty – but also for transcendent compassion.
“After all, he turned his face towards men only with reluctance; his cathedral was sufficient for him. It was peopled with marble figures, – kings, saints, bishops, – who at least did not burst out laughing in his face, and who gazed upon him only with tranquillity and kindliness. The other statues, those of the monsters and demons, cherished no hatred for him, Quasimodo. He resembled them too much for that. They seemed rather, to be scoffing at other men. The saints were his friends, and blessed him; the monsters were his friends and guarded him. So he held long communion with them. He sometimes passed whole hours crouching before one of these statues, in solitary conversation with it. If anyone came, he fled like a lover surprised in his serenade.”
– Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, book 4, chapter 3, translation Isabel F. Hapgood, Project Gutenberg.
Photos: Universal Pictures, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
