OrgaNOWA Symphony of Cinema: a screening of „Häxan” with live music
On February 6, in the concert hall of NOSPR in Katowice, as part of the OrgaNOWA Symphony of Cinema series, audiences will have the opportunity to experience a screening of the monumental film Häxan (1922) by Danish visionary Benjamin Christensen. Once condemned by church censorship, the film today fascinates with its richness of symbolism and striking visual imagination. Its distinctive tragic tone will be brought to the fore through live organ improvisations performed by Filip Presseisen.
Benjamin Christensen – Danish director, actor, producer, screenwriter and set designer – was, as a creative personality, very much like his cinema: versatile, unconventional, and exceptional. He studied medicine, worked as an opera singer and actor, and even… imported French champagne, before eventually entering the film industry with great force – understood by him both as an art form and as an industry.
Professionally, he moved between Denmark, Sweden, Germany and Hollywood’s dream factory. In 1922, his monumental work Häxan premiered on screens worldwide. Produced on commission for the Swedish company Svensk Filmindustri, the film was created over nearly three years, with an enormous budget and access to the most advanced filmmaking technology of the time. The scale of the film fully matched the ambition of its subtitle: A Cultural History Lecture in Living Pictures. The historical perspective it offered was highly unusual – the story of black magic and Satanism in the Middle Ages was extended into the director’s contemporary context. Universal history, art history, iconography and psychiatry all intertwine in seven masterfully directed parts of this cinematic treatise.
Equally impossible to overlook is the outstanding cinematography by Johan Ankerstjerne – many of the film’s extraordinarily evocative images are stylized to resemble the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. A film seemingly destined for success, Häxan nevertheless failed to win over audiences and fell afoul of church censorship. It was likely a work ahead of its time. Viewed today, it reveals yet another layer of meaning – the enduring oppression of women embedded in culture. Notably, the director himself appears on screen in the role of the devil…
Anita Skwara
The series is presented in partnership with Timeless Film Foundation and Silesia Film.
