The Phantom of the Opera

After celebrated performances accompanying our screenings of Faust (2022) and Waxworks (2023),
Wellington Film Society is screening another great silent horror film at the Embassy Theatre
with live musical accompaniment.

We are working with taonga puoro practitioner Ruby Solly (Kai Tahu, Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe),
drummer Hikurangi Schaverien-Kaa (Ruawaipu, Ngāti Porou) and bassist Seth Boy to compose and
perform a live score for The Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian, 1925) in recognition of its 100th
anniversary. There is no better place than the Embassy for Julian’s masterpiece, especially since it
too is celebrating its centenary.

WFS screenings are usually members-only but we have decided to hold two performances (12 and
13 May) with the second open to everyone. WFS has held a couple of screenings in 2024 where the
Embassy has packed out and we have had to turn people away, so we want to ensure nobody misses
this film and music event.

Decades before Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ostentatious Broadway show, Whangaroa-born Rupert
Julian directed the definitive adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel. It stars Lon “Man of a
Thousand Faces” Chaney (last seen in our 2024 screening of The Unknown) as a deformed Phantom
who haunts the Paris Opera House. The Phantom seeks to manipulate the goings on of the theatre
to make his beloved Christine (Mary Philbin) a star, but is thwarted by the men in her life.

Julian directed a large number of films after he arrived in Hollywood in 1911, Phantom being the
most acclaimed, but he was reportedly a difficult collaborator and rumours abound that Chaney was
the true artistic force behind the film. Regardless of whether New Zealand can lay claim to any of the
movie’s success, it has gone on to be a classic. It was added to the United States National Film
Registry in 1998 and Chaney’s Phantom, obscured with hideous makeup, has endured as one of the
most indelible images of the silent era.

For more detail on Rupert Julian, check out the work of Robert Catto, the foremost historian on the
filmmaker.

Dr. Ruby Solly (Kāi Tahu, Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe) is a writer, musician, and taonga pūoro practitioner
living in Pōneke. She has performed with the likes of Yo-yo Ma, Trinity Roots, Whirimako Black,
French For Rabbits, and Marlon Williams. As a writer, she has two books of poetry published under
Te Herenga Waka University Press; Tōku Pāpā (2020) and The Artist (2023). In 2024, Ruby graduated
with a doctorate in public health, investigating the use of taonga pūoro (traditional Māori
instruments) in hauora Māori. 

Seth Boy is a double bassist and composer and has been based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara for the last
eight years, working as a sideman and bandleader of numerous jazz and improvising music groups in
the city as well as being involved in many cross-disciplinary projects. Born in the Philippines and
raised in Pukekohe, Boy’s composing and arranging sensibility draws from the starkly different
perspectives of the spaces in which he’s grown up and grown.

Hikurangi Schaverien-Kaa is a chameleonic drummer, percussionist and composer of Ruawaipu,
Ngāti Porou and Ashkenazi descent who works in Te Whanganui a-Tara, Aotearoa. He studied
improvised music in the Black American tradition at Te Kōkī (the New Zealand School of Music) and
has brought his eclectic tones and approach to Aotearoa and the world with artists including Dawn
Diver, Dateline, Ebony Lamb, French for Rabbits, DARTZ, Mā, Chris CK, Mireya Ramos (Flor de
Toloache, Mariachi El Bronx), Glass Vaults, Whirimako Black, the late Aaron Tokona, Ben Shepherd
(Chance the Rapper, Schoolboy Q), Tom Warrington (Buddy Rich) and Rodger Fox. Hikurangi’s
greatest musical accomplishment is being mistaken for a drum machine by Hugh Sundae.

12 May Screening – Members only
13 May Screening – Screening open to the public as well as WFS members – koha welcome