The Kennington Bioscope is a regular cinema event featuring live accompaniment to silent films that takes place at the Cinema Museum.

Asphalt (1929), directed by by Joe May with Gustav Fröhlich and Betty Amann.

Light on plot and heavy in atmosphere, Asphalt was one of the last silent films to come out of Ufa, and the German mega-studio seems to have spared no expense in its making.

The story of a young traffic cop seduced by an alluring con artist, it is also the silent swan song of director Joe May, long-time maker of detective serials and extravagant epics, and one of the last big silent films produced by Erich Pommer, the man who had overseen the creative minds behind Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), (1920), directed by Robert Wiene, and the budget-busting Metropolis (1927), the latter of which had very nearly sunk Ufa.

We will be showing a new digital restoration.

For the first part of the evening, we are very pleased to welcome the author and journalist Ted Botha who has written Hollywood On The Veld, the story of I.W. Schlesinger.

In 1913, a secretive American millionaire had a crazy idea: to make movies in the gold-mining town of Johannesburg. And not just any movies but the biggest in the world, huge spectacles with elaborate sets, thousands of extras and epic story lines. Isidore Schlesinger – better known as ‘IW’ – built a studio on a farm called Killarney, where he set out to challenge a place in America that was in its infancy: Hollywood. And he not only matched them but outdid them. So how come hardly anyone has ever heard of him?

Live piano accompaniment. Ashley Valentine will be playing for Asphalt and Colin Sell will be accompanying the first half.

Silent film with intertitles which may be suitable for the deaf and hard of hearing.

Tickets & Pricing

£8. Seats are limited, so please arrive early or request an invitation using the email kenbioscope@gmail.com.