Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg’s “Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene”

In 1923, as he sensed the looming storm of "fear, danger, and catastrophe" in Germany, the composer Arnold Schoenberg penned a poignant and eerily prescient letter to his former friend, the painter Wassily Kandinsky. Schoenberg intertwined his destiny with that of all Jews, foreseeing their imminent exile or violent demise. Straub-Huillet's film serves as a powerful rendition of Schoenberg's letter and Bertolt Brecht's 1935 address to the International Congress in Defense of Culture. It stands as an unflinching denunciation of anti-Semitism, Germany's crimes against humanity, and the ruthless war machinery of capitalism.