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Silent Divas | Assunta Spina | Film concert

Celebrate Italian silent cinema’s golden age with our Silent Divas film concert featuring live musical accompaniments by trailblazing Melbourne-based female electronic composers.

Silent Divas | Film concert
Assunta Spina with live score by Maria Moles

Assunta Spina
Director: Gustavo Serena, Francesca Bertini
Italy | 1915 | 67 mins
Silent with English subbed Italian intertitles
Film clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYB2VgjI2wU&ab_channel=womenfilmpioneersproject 

One of the most celebrated films of Italian silent cinema, starring and co-directed by
one of the most celebrated movie stars of the time, Francesca Bertini.
Based on a play of 1909 by Salvatore Di Giacomo, Assunta Spina brings to life the dramatic story of a beautiful laundress loved by two men, and the violent conflict of passion that follows.
Along with the melodrama, romance, and tragedy that characterize the plot, Assunta Spina portrays the daily life of the lower-classes in Naples, with the city itself becoming its uncredited protagonist. The movie realistically portrays the beauty of the city’s most colourful areas, the chaotic frenzy of its neighbourhoods and markets, as well as the run-down state of the working-class suburbs.
Assunta Spina was an extraordinary box office success, becoming one of the most successful Italian silent films of all time and further cementing Francesca Bertini as one of the most recognisable silent cinema stars in Italy and abroad.

Assunta Spina will be screened with a new score composed and played live by Maria Moles.

Maria is an Australian drummer, composer and producer based in Narrm/Melbourne. Her solo percussion performances draw on ideas from the Kulintang music of the Philippines and contemporary electronic production to weave hypnotic webs from layers of unmetered pulse that slowly undergo subtle textural transformations.
Maria’s debut EP ‘Mondo Flockard’ was released in 2016 through Perth label Tonelist, and was listed on Avant Music News under Best Albums of the Year. In 2017, she composed and performed a percussion and electronics score for Ben Christensen’s 1922 film ‘Haxan’ at Dark Mofo festival in Hobart, Tasmania. Performing on solo drums, Maria has opened for Claire Rousay, MY DISCO, Clever Austin (Hiatus Kaiyote), Chris Corsano (Bjork, Thurston Moore, Evan Parker), Oren Ambarchi, and Alex Zhang Hungtai (Dirty Beaches). Her solo LP ‘Opening’ was released through Nice Music in January 2019. Maria released her second album ‘For Leolanda’ via Room4o in 2022.

https://www.mariamoles.com/

This film concert is part of Silent Divas, a program of film screenings with live musical accompaniment celebrating the brightest stars of the Italian silent cinema’s golden age.

Silent Divas is presented by the Italian Cultural Institute Melbourne.

https://www.astortheatre.net.au/ 

 

Assunta Spina | Silent Divas

  • Organized by: Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Melbourne