Intolerance

Intolerance (noun, uncountable): Hatred of people with different beliefs from yourself.

“Intolerance”: The monumental, three-hour, episodic silent film by D.W. Griffith, which many consider the artistic equal of Beethoven’s “Fifth Symphony” and the masterpieces of Michelangelo.

Made in 1916, the film examines intolerance—national, political, religious and social—through four stories which span the centuries from the fall of ancient Babylon to the Crucifixion of Christ and from the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre to the class struggle of the early 20th century. Its conclusion: intolerance is an incurable human pathology.

“Human coexistence on Earth is conveyed as ongoing civil strife”, notes Io Voulgaraki, a creator of supremely atmospheric, fiercely passionate spectacles with tragi-comic tones.

For her “Intolerance”, Voulgaraki stages only the last of the film’s four sections, in which an innocent man is condemned for a crime he did not commit. Set against the puritanism and unbridled capitalism of the US in 1914–15, the production uses a contemporary theatrical idiom to compose a silent music-theatre epic which tackles the issue of ‘intolerance versus solidarity’.

A cast of ten and a quartet playing original music by Thodoris Abazis join her in this keenly-awaited spectacle which—promising political, social and existential self-knowledge—poses the question: ‘Us’ or ‘them’ forever. But why ‘forever’?