Karl Brown’s Stark Love: A World Premiere Concert

Karl Brown’s Stark Love: A World Premiere Concert

1927. USA. Written and directed by Karl Brown. With Helen Mundy, Forrest James, Silas Miracle. A landmark of silent cinema restored by The Museum of Modern Art, Stark Love has its world premiere with a new musical arrangement by Gillian B. Anderson, based on the original cue sheets and performed live by the NYU Cinemusica Viva Players under her direction. Karl Brown was a distinguished cameraman for D. W. Griffith and James Cruze before making his astonishing directorial debut with Stark Love, a radically proto-Neorealist melodrama filmed in the Great Smoky Mountains with a cast of nonprofessionals. The story centers on the tensions between a father and son who are both in love with the same girl (played by 16-year-old Knoxville native Helen Mundy). Infused with a beautiful, Flaherty-like documentary naturalism, Stark Love evokes the deep rootedness and wary isolation of traditional Appalachian life. 70 min.