(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) – “The Yellow Ticket,” a forgotten gem of the silent film era, will be screened at MASS MoCA on Saturday, November 16, 2013, at 8pm, with a new score composed and performed live by violinist Alicia Svigals. Featuring a larger-than-life performance by the great Polish silent film star Pola Negri, the film is the first film to explore anti-Semitism in imperial Russia.

“The Yellow Ticket” is a story of secret identities, heroic measures, and triumphant love – a testament to struggle and overcoming adversity. Directed by Vicor Janson and Eugen Illes, the 1918 silent film follows Anna Mirrel (Negri), a young Jewish girl in Czarist Russia. Anna, believing her father is ill, must present herself as a prostitute – the only women allowed to travel freely outside the ghetto – to obtain a yellow travel ticket to reach her father.

Originally commissioned by the Foundation for Jewish Culture’s New Jewish Culture Network (NJCN), Svigals’ score for “The Yellow Ticket” marks the world’s leading klezmer violinist’s first feature-length film composition. The New York Jewish Week calls Svigals’ score “a haunting mixture of klezmer and high modernism, redolent of the period in which the film was made.”

For “The Yellow Ticket,” Svigals – a former member of the Klezmatics who has composed for violinist Itzhak Perlman and the Kronos Quartet – delivers a lush 66-minute piece for piano and violin inspired by Eastern European folk forms, European café music, 20th-century classical composers such as Béla Bartók and Ernest Bloch, and contemporary improvisation. Joining Svigals onstage will be virtuoso Canadian pianist Marilyn Lerner, whose work spans the worlds of jazz, creative improvisation, klezmer, and 20th-century classical music.

A full bar and dinner and snacks from Lickety Split are available before and during the show. Tickets are $12 in advance, $16 day of, and $10 for students. Members receive a 10% discount. Tickets are available through the MASS MoCA box office, located on Marshall Street in North Adams, from 11am to 5pm (open every day, except Tuesdays). Tickets can also be charged by phone by calling 413.662.2111 x1 during box office hours or purchased online at MASS MoCA.