Thursday, March 8 | 7:30 pm
Impeccably restored for its fiftieth anniversary, Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach marked the first feature-length collaboration between legendary husband-and-wife directorial team, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. Based on a series of letters that the title character wrote to her husband, master composer Johann Sebastian Bach, Straub and Huillet’s early masterpiece builds its narrative around a series of orchestral performances staged within the same spaces that Bach occupied. Among the featured performers is Gustav Leonhardt as Johann Sebastian, a real-life musician renowned for his use of period instruments—something he does in this revolutionary reimagining of musical film. Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach may be the most accessible and rewarding work in the European avant-gardists extraordinary careers.
Directors Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet | 1968 | In German with English subtitles | 94 minutes | NR | Blu-ray
