Children of No Importance (100th Anniversary) + Live Score

This special screening of the film will be introduced by Matthew Jarron, University of Dundee, and feature live musical accompaniment by acclaimed pianist Steven Gellatly. 

The cinema of Weimar Germany is celebrated for its expressionist fantasies, but it also produced a series of powerful social dramas attempting to show the harsh realities of life for working class people during this turbulent time. One of the most successful directors of these so-called Enlightenment films was Gerhard Lamprecht, whose work exposes some of the darker aspects of German society in the 1920s. 

This year marks the centenary of one of his best films, Children of No Importance (also known as The Illegitimate). Inspired by an official report from the Association for the Protection of Children Against Exploitation & Abuse, it follows the lives of three children who are maltreated by their foster parents. Lamprecht was widely praised for his sensitive directing of his child actors. One critic wrote “Never, not even in America, the land of child stars, has a film director immersed himself so lovingly in the psyche of the child and created so lovingly from it.”