(AMHERST, Mass.) – “Jewish Luck,” a 1925 silent film made in the USSR and based on Sholem Aleichem’s series of stories featuring the character Menakhem Mendl (played by the famous actor Solomon Mikhoels), will be screened with live musical accompaniment on piano by Robert Humphreville at the Yiddish Book Center on Sunday, January 18, 2015, at 2pm.

Directed by Alexander Granovsky, the 100-minute black and white film, which revolves around the daydreaming entrepreneur Menakhem Mendl, who specializes in doomed strike-it-rich schemes, will be shown in a newly restored print featuring new English intertitles.

Robert Humphreville is a freelance pianist and organist. For the past 35 years, he has accompanied silent movies on piano and organ all over New England, and the Boston Globe has praised him for his inventive improvisations. A composer of independent film scores, he has also been active in the music programs of Brooks School in North Andover; Groton School in Groton; Buckingham, Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge; Bethany Convent in Arlington; the Apollo Club in Boston; and Temple Isaiah in Lexington. In 1980, Humphreville graduated from Harvard, where he majored in music, and now spends his time between Cambridge and New London, Conn.