Stephin Merritt with The Unknown

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Just added! Preceding The Unknown, Merritt will conduct the audience in creating a soundtrack to Guy Maddin’s visceral short Sissy Boy Slap Party (1995), a film that dares to answer the question, “What’s a soul to do with idle time on the Isle of Manbos?” For answer, see title. With special guest on accordion, Daniel Handler.

As the leader of the band the Magnetic Fields, Stephin Merritt has always played the outcast. It’s only fitting that this new score pairs him with some of silent cinema’s quintessential iconoclasts, director Browning and master monster Lon Chaney. The film also features then-relative-newcomer Joan Crawford. In The Unknown, a characteristically outré offering from Browning, Chaney plays a supposedly armless circus performer named Alonzo. He can do anything with his feet that most do with their hands, but he carries a terrible secret: Not only does Alonzo possess hands, he uses them to strangle people to death.

Those who attended Merritt’s wonderful performance accompanying the strange silent film adaptation of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in 2010 might recall that he hinted at the possibility of playing live with a trio of films over the years at SFIFF. This will be his second. –Sean Uyehara

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