PERFORMANCE / MUSIC

Aesop’s Sound Fables: Our Hospitality

SATURDAY, MARCH 16, 2024
7:00 PM

Secret Pour
1114 DeKalb Avenue, Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn

$10
TICKETS + INFORMATION

Notwithstanding the charms of Aesop’s Sound Fables, the ensemble that is live-scoring this silent film, I want to talk now about Our Hospitality’s auteur, Buster Keaton. To me, Keaton was one of the signal American artists of the 20th Century. First, he made the most unsparingly bleak mainstream slapstick you could imagine, totally devoid of sentiment (while it’s apt that Keaton finally, toward the end of his life, collaborated with Beckett, it’s a pity that Keaton didn’t like Beckett’s work much: too close? too much theoreticizing that to Keaton seemed unnecessary?). Second, he was formally both acute and audacious, making use of the cinematic medium — and more particularly the silent cinematic medium — that has never been surpassed in its imagination, aptness, and precision. Our Hospitality is one of Keaton’s stone masterpieces.

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Natural wine, good wine-bar food, at Winona’s.