HÄXAN
Hugo Max returns to the Prince Charles Cinema…
WITH LIVE SCORE
The Prince Charles Cinema
5th January 2025
"Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan is a film that must be seen to be believed. Playing out as a lecture on witchcraft ‘made flesh’, the film foreshadows the found footage horror genre and features many of the most imaginatively realised and grotesque visuals of silent cinema history. My viola takes on the voice of the occult-obsessed lecturer(/director), possessed by the alluring darkness of the subject, wrestling with the film’s message of hierarchical corruption and its prevailing controversies.”
– Hugo Max on scoring HÄXAN
In anticipation of his UK tour, violist and filmmaker Hugo Max reflects on his unique process improvising live soundtracks to silent films on solo viola
Dissonance continues its journey in Canada and Japan, officially selected to screen at Toronto Indie Filmmakers Festival & Tokyo International Short Film Festival
Sunday 11th February, 3pm: Buster Keaton's The General – Little Theatre Picturehouse, Bath
Sunday 31st March, 5:45pm: Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's Nosferatu – Prince Charles Cinema, London
Thursday 4th April, 5:30pm: Buster Keaton's Three Ages followed by a live Q&A with Hugo Max and film writer Sean Wilson – The Museum of Bath at Work
Thursday 25th April, 8:45pm: Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger – Prince Charles Cinema, London
Sunday 5th May, 12:30pm: Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. (Centenary Screening) – Prince Charles Cinema, London
Thursday 30th May, 6:30pm: Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari – Prince Charles Cinema, London
J. S. Bach’s Complete Sonatas for Harpsichord & Viola da Gamba
Hugo Max Viola | Jack Gonzalez-Harding Harpsichord
Buster Keaton’s Three Ages at The Bath Archaeo-Heritage Film Festival
Hugo Max will perform as part of the 2024 Bath Archaeo-Heritage Film Festival, celebrating conversations between cinema and archeology, presenting a live improvised score to Buster Keaton’s time-hopping, tripartite gem Three Ages (1923) followed by a Q&A with film journalist Sean Wilson, author of The Sound of Cinema.
Thursday 4th April – Bath Museum at Work – Three Ages plus Q&A, 5:30pm
Buster Keaton with Live Score at Bath’s Little Theatre Picturehouse
Sunday 11th February – Little Theatre Picturehouse – The General, 3pm
Behind Barbed Wire – The Making of A Child in Striped Pyjamas
Film Premiere at Fellowship House, N. London,
The story behind Noah Max’s critically-lauded 2023 opera, explored in a documentary by Hugo Max
2nd February 2024
Lunchtime Lecture on Silent Film Improvisation & German Expressionist Cinema at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire
Hugo visited The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire’s Strings Department to discuss his process improvising live scores to silent films, performing alongside The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari for a special evening presentation.
January 2024
Silent Films with Live Scores – January 2024
Sunday 7th January – Prince Charles Cinema – The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 8:45pm
Wednesday 10th January – Royal Birmingham Conservatoire – Lunchtime Lecture on Silent Film Improvisation & German Expressionist Cinema, 1:45-3pm / The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 6pm
Sunday 21st January – Magdalen College Auditorium, Oxford – Der Golem, 7pm
Tuesday 23rd January – Prince Charles Cinema – Nosferatu, 8:15pm
pc. Inis Oírr Asano Photography
MAXREX Films Selectrospective @ Close-Up Film Centre
A showcase of film collaborations by Hugo Max and Bora Rex focussing on a trilogy of shorts they made together whilst studying at Oxford where they discovered a productive tension in challenging the traditions of this environment. Davinci, I’m Still Learning and Now I Am Going were accompanied by other experimental films similarly fuelled by the joy of thinking through making.
January 2024
Dissonance at the 17th up-and-coming International Film Festival Hannover
An inspiring four days featuring incredible short films from all over the world and engaging with their creators, Dissonance screened in Hannover as a part of the festival’s International Competition.
November 2023
Explore Hugo’s process improvising live scores to silent films in this new article for Little White Lies Magazine
November 2023
Shochet ins Kino
(Butcher in the Cinema)
Comprising ten paintings made over the last two years, the works in Shochet ins Kino materialise the Jewish joke that ‘giraffe meat would be kosher, if only the shochet knew where to cut the neck’. Hanging in the lobby of London’s historic Phoenix Cinema like carcasses in an abattoir, painted landscapes pervaded by the presence of decapitated giraffes reflect on familial traditions, contemplating the role of the anecdote in collective memory to reveal the proximity of horror and hope in the intergenerational psyche.
2nd - 29th November 2023
Private View 2nd November 2023
6 - 8pm
Live performance 7pm
pc. Bora Rex
Hugo Max will present further improvised soundtracks to F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari at The Prince Charles Cinema this Autumn.
Nosferatu – Friday 29th September 8:15pm / Monday 23rd October 8:45pm
"I first saw Murnau’s Symphony of Horror when I was nine years old. The film’s expressionistic images continue to haunt me, the chiaroscuro compositions tapping vividly into timeless subconscious fears. My improvisations on viola and piano draw inspiration from the leitmotifs and sound effects of 70s horror soundtracks and the languages of Second Viennese School composers contemporary to Murnau, also Jewish Traditional Music that informs my personal approach to creating a score for the film."
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari – Monday 16th October 8:45pm / Saturday 28th October 8pm
“The rich timbre of the viola perfectly captures the aura of Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. My improvisations translate the film’s angular painted shadows into unnerving melodies inspired by musical techniques that were evolving during the 1920s. The nefarious showmanship of Caligari invites theatrical and macabre sounds, in contrast with ghostly gestures evoking ‘the somnambulist’ who is compelled to act against his will.”
The Dissonance Book – Now Available
Hugo Max’s new book charts the eight-year journey bringing Dissonance from script to screen.
Find out more and reserve your limited edition copy.
June 2023
Raccoons for Lunch!
A short and sweet farewell concert for the Magdalen College community performed by Hugo Max and Robert Max.
June 2023
The Soutine Quartet at The Frinton Festival
Performing works by Mozart, Martinů and Max with The Soutine Quartet at the Frinton Festival, involving young artists from Tendring Technology College who displayed their work at the concert.
May 2023
Teptraptych for solo viola by Noah Max
It has been thrilling to premiere and tour my brother’s brilliant, visceral composition for solo viola.
Teptraptych is divided into four movements that expressively conjure the work of visual artists that have inspired us both over the years including Henry Moore, Francis Bacon and Leon Kossoff.
Listen to the third movement, Lonely Giacometti, as performed at the Frinton Festival.
May 2023
Grail Exhibition @ Fusion Arts
Hugely excited to be exhibiting with dear friend and long-time collaborator Antonia Jameson in Grail at Fusion Arts, Oxford.
Explore the installation and paintings exhibited.
May 2023
Dissonance (World Premiere) at The Holywell Music Room with The Soutine Quartet and Ruskin Artists
A pleasure to premiere Dissonance alongside collaborations with dear friends and family members at The Holywell Music Room. Experience a clip from the film and explore documentation of the event’s artwork in The Dissonance Book (published July 2023).
February 2023
