Upcoming film screenings
UCLA PALEVSKY Lecture & Screening: Audio-Visual Romans
Time: Friday 21 April 2023
Venue: James Bridges Theater, UCLA
Enrico Guazzoni’s Cajus Julius Caesar (1914)
With original piano score by Michele Sganga performed live by the composer
Introduction to the film & to the composer
Michele Sganga – Guazzoni’s Cesare 1914 screening
Q&A with the composer and discussion of the role of music & intertitles in giving emotion to Roman history in silent cinema
The film

A live screening of the rarely seen yet remarkable Italian silent feature film Cajus Julius Caesar (1914, dir. Enrico Guazzoni) brought over especially from the archives of the Netherlands Film Institute and accompanied by an original score composed for the occasion by the noted concert pianist and composer Michele Sganga. Caesar’s life is presented in three movements: first romantic melodrama (his secret love for the beautiful Servilia); then triumph (his victory in Gaul); finally tragedy (death at the hands of his friends).
The musician

Prior film screenings
In July 2019, at the UCL Bloomsbury Theatre, the professional pianist Stephen Horne accompanied a screening of four rarely seen but remarkable films about ancient Greece and Rome. Two of the films documented the ruins of the Acropolis and Pompeii as they appeared to travellers in the early twentieth century. Two were aesthetically rich and immersive feature films concerning the sculptor Phydias and the emperor Caligula. Through their enticing use of gesture and look, exotic sets and extravagant costumes, music and movement, these latter films offer their spectators the opportunity to enter into the classical past and experience it as if they were there. The screening of Caligula was the UK premiere of a beautifully restored print from Italy. The other prints were obtained especially from archives in Austria, the USA, and the UK. They were introduced by Maria Wyke (UCL) and Pantelis Michelakis (University of Bristol).