Unveiling the Shadows: Judex and Live Music

On November 15, 2025, within the framework of the 38th Panorama of European Cinema, the Greek Film Archive will host a special screening of Louis Feuillade’s 1916 silent masterpiece Judex, accompanied by an original live musical performance by a multifaceted ensemble of Greek artists.

Michalis Nivolianitis (piano, percussion, electronics) and Vasilis Tzavaras (guitar, loops, keyboards) will join Michalis Katachanas (violin), Stefanos Psaradakis (percussion, electronics), and Kostas Vazouras (saxophone, flute), creating a living sonic landscape composed especially for Feuillade’s film.

Their music will move between electronic and electroacoustic textures, drawing from 20th-century idioms, post-rock, jazz, ambient, and cinematic soundscapes, transforming the silent image into a contemporary, immersive performance that bridges past and present.

The Cinematic Myth of Louis Feuillade

Louis Feuillade, creator of the iconic Fantômas and Les Vampires, was among the early European filmmakers who explored mystery and fantasy through serialized form. With Judex (1916), he redefined the archetype of the “dark hero” with poetic nuance — the masked figure of Judex is not a villain but a symbol of justice and moral transformation.

Restored by the Cinémathèque Française, the film offers the Athenian audience a rare opportunity to experience a world of intrigue, light, and shadow — where morality, myth, and cinema converge.

Music as Moving Image

The live score by Nivolianitis, Tzavaras, and their collaborators is based on original musical themes composed specifically for Judex, enriched through improvisation and real-time sound design.

The result will be a dynamic sound field in which music functions both as commentary and parallel narrative, creating a new cinematic body — a dialogue between sight and sound.

The two composers, long-time collaborators known as Occasional Dream, continue a creative path that began in the 1990s, evolved through projects such as the album Apousia (DNA Label, 2012), and extends into the present with their most recent live-based release Sunrise (Η Αυγή), also on DNA Label.

Their current collaboration for Judex unites all these threads — electroacoustic exploration, improvisation, and cinematic memory — into a new live experience that functions as a conversation between eras, forms, and emotions.

Weave and the Performative Field

The event also aligns with the performative and research field of Weave, the artistic and educational initiative founded by Vasilis Tzavaras, Michalis Nivolianitis, Erato Tzavara, and Miranda Vatikióti.

Weave explores intersections between cinema, music, education, and performance, creating live artistic experiences that merge creative practice with pedagogical dialogue.

The Judex performance is part of this trajectory — a performative proposal where the moving image becomes a space for listening, and sound becomes an interpretation of vision.

From Sunrise to Judex: A Continuum of Sound and Vision

This new creation follows only months after the live presentation of F.W. Murnau’s silent masterpiece Sunrise (Η Αυγή) at the French Institute of Greece, an event that marked the beginning of Weave’s journey into live cinematic performance.

The music for Sunrise, composed by Nivolianitis and Tzavaras, is now available digitally via DNA Label:🎧 Listen on Prostudiomasters🎬 YouTube Playlist

The dialogue between Sunrise and Judex underlines the artists’ ongoing research into live music for silent cinema — exploring how image and sound can engage in new, evolving forms of communication.

A Cinematic Marathon

Following an invitation by Ninos Fenek Mikelidis, the artistic collaboration continues for a second year, with the challenge of presenting — for the first time in Greece — the complete restored version of all episodes of Judex: a six-hour-and-thirty-minute marathon exploring the dialectical relationship between music and historical silent cinema.

A Living Cinema

The screening of Judex at the 38th Panorama of European Cinema promises to be an immersive encounter — a moment where the past meets the present, and silence finds its voice through sound.

The performance invites audiences to rediscover silent cinema not as an artifact of history, but as a living, breathing art form — a journey into the shadows, where sound and image become one.

This event is supported by the 38th Panorama of European Cinema.