Scary Stories

Scary Stories was the first horror film early on in German cinema. Newly restored by the Goethe Institut, responsible also for bringing the copy to the 30th Mostra, the production includes five episodes based, among others, on tales by Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson. Regarded as pioneer, the film served as a model for other productions of the kind such as Tales of Terror, filmed by Roger Corman in 1962.

Minimalistic and realistic scenography are in evidence in the film, together with trick techniques and special effects that were revolutionary for the times. The main characters made up the so-called "hellish trio" of German silent film: Anita Berber, Conrad Veidt, and Reinhold Schünzel. Veidt, in fact, was to become famous as Major Strasser in Casablanca (1942). The trio plays the parts, respectively, of a harlot, Death, and Satan who, at midnight zap through a second hand bookshop in search of stories to be told in cinema. Five one-act plays, five sinister events:

The Apparition

A couple hires a hotel room. The husband returns to the hotel at night only to find that his wife has mysteriously disappeared. All insist, however, that he arrived unaccompanied in the first place.

The Hand

Two men are playing dice for a woman. The loser kills the winner but the winner?s hand chases after him.

The Black Cat

A husband murders his unfaithful wife and conceals the body walled up in the cellars. A cat, however, finds the hiding place.

The Suicide Club

A police officer discovers a suicide club in a house. All those who enter must die.

The Ghost

An elderly lover is exposed to ridicule by the story of a ghost arranged for by his mistress? husband

Scary Stories was first shown in 1919 in the Berlin cinemas and was on, continually, until the mid-twenties. The film was also outstanding, the same year, at the Amsterdam Film Expo where it was awarded a prize for merit. Pianist Paulo Braga improvises some musical themes live, working on the images that are being projected.

MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT

Graduated from the Tatuí Conservatory where he developed didactic activities as a piano professor and ensemble practice. He was responsible, in 1990, for founding the Department of Popular Music. He was professor at UNICAMP from 1999 until 2003. He is professor with the Popular Music Department of the Tom Jobim Center for Musical Studies. Together with Paulo Flores, he is responsible for six editions of Festival Brasil Experimental. He has been soloist, among others, for the Banda Sinfônica and the State of São Paulo Sinfônica Jazz Orchestra, the Villa-Lobos Ensemble and the Tatuí Strings Ensemble. He is part of QuartaD (of contemporary erudite music) and of the Bonsai Trio. Since 1988, he has been part of the Arrigo Barnabé group. In 2006, he went on a European tour with Mônica Salmaso and her group.

43ª MOSTRA INTERNACIONAL DE CINEMA

43ª MOSTRA INTERNACIONAL DE CINEMA