I made a rather macabre stage announcement at the Earthwise John Santos show in that John works with his hands and the movie I am showing, with six musicians performing simultaneously a live original score, is about a concert pianist in Germany who loses the function of his hands after a train crash.

But I just noticed that my earlier post today was also about hands – I used a close crop of a Robert Maplethorpe photo that changed its meaning signficantly and sort of tied it in to this post.

The Hands of Orlac movie screening October 25 at The Mitch features a band comprising:

Allison Lovejoy, piano/key/accordion;

Alina Polonskaya, violin/viola;

David Boyce, saxophones/bass clarinet and electronics (and the only one here who I have worked with previously, when Broun Fellinis played Cubberley twice);

Lisa Mezzacappa, acoustic bass;

Eric Moffat, sound EFX /Fender Jaguar/ soundscapes;  and he’s the leader of the gang;

Dave Mihaly, percussion/Foley.

I heard about this project fom The Balboa Theatre mailing list (a venue in SF founded by Gary Meyer who in a previous life founded Landmark Theaters and booked The Varsity). I enjoyed the show but deliberately left before the conclusion, hoping to catch the ending at my own show. Although the odds are that I will be working and not watching the film.

I’m also reminded of my former professor Al Lavalley, who is an expert on German expressionistic film.

The star of this work is Conrad Veidt, who I mainly think of as Major Strasser in “Casablanca”.