The Thief of Bagdad (Raoul Walsh, USA 1924)
2h 29m - Silent film with English subtitles - Open to all

Welcome to a magnificent silent film concert with newly composed music by Kjetil Schjander Luhr and Saleh Mahfoud, in Olavshallen Lille sal on February 22! 🎶

Cinemateket Trondheim is proud to invite you to a silent film concert in collaboration with Olavshallen, to a performance where six musicians will perform newly written music to the over a hundred-year-old Hollywood classic The Thief of Bagdad. The film from 1924 is directed by Raoul Walsh, and the great silent film star Douglas Fairbanks plays the main role.

The Thief of Bagdad is a spectacular silent film adventure that draws inspiration from several of the stories in 1001 Nights. The film is an interesting insight into early Hollywood's fascination with the "exotic". It revels in classic clichés, borrowed or stolen from Arab culture: There are flying carpets, sabers, dome architecture, live tigers and elaborate mustaches. More unusual for American film, and well worth noting, is also a very positive portrayal of Islam, as Douglas Fairbanks’ atheist thief undergoes a moral awakening that sets the adventure in motion in earnest.

Kjetil Schjander Luhr is a regular silent film pianist at the Cinemateket in Oslo, and he has long wanted to compose music for The Thief of Bagdad, which is the epitome of Hollywood’s “swashbuckler” films: grand adventures with athletic feats of heroism and good humor, usually set against an idealized, heroic past. Kjetil's desire has been to approach the film with a broader cultural horizon than Hollywood could offer in the 1920s, and together with the Syrian multi-instrumentalist and composer Saleh Mahfoud, he has created a new and moody musical outfit for this classic silent film gem, which can delight and entertain a new audience, 102 years after it first premiered.

🎶 Musicians:
Saleh Mahfoud: Kanun, guitars, vocals, electronics
Kjetil Schjander Luhr: Keyboards, piano, effects
Khaled Habeeb: Oud
Hayden Powell: Trumpet
Andreas Wildhagen: Drums, percussion
Johanna Scheie Orellana: Flute