Protéa
+ Live Narration + Live Music + Foley art
Sunday 29 November 2026, 15:00
Barbican, Cinema 1
Dir. Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset France, 1913
50 min
With live narration and musical score by Jarvis Cocker, string quartet led by Richard Jones and Foley artist Franziska and Matthias Radcliffe.
Musician Jarvis Cocker, Foley artists Franziska & Matthias Radcliffe and a string quartet under the direction of Richard Jones create a thrilling new live score for the first episode of the early adventure serial Protéa (1913). Inspired by the Japanese tradition of benshi – silent-film performers who narrated, voiced and interpreted films live – Cocker’s spoken performance, the foley artist’s soundscape and the quartet’s music propel the film into the present.
Josette Andriot plays Protéa, one of cinema’s first female action stars. Elusive, fearless and always one step ahead, she slips between identities – from society woman to thief, musician and lion tamer. Together with her accomplice L’Anguille (‘the Eel’), she turns disguise, acrobatics and poise into instruments of espionage. One of her key looks, the close-fitting black jersey bodysuit, appears two years before Musidora made it her signature style in Les Vampires.
A jewel of early screen invention, Protéa was directed by Éclair’s leading filmmaker Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset. Too often overlooked by film history, he brought experience in art, costume and set design to cinema, helping to establish the ciné-roman, or cinematic novel, and developing bold approaches to framing and screen performance. As a contemporary collaborator recalled, ‘he understood that actors had not only to perform for the camera, but also to pose for it’.
The film survives as a tinted 50-minute fragment, restored and reconstructed in 2013 by the Cinémathèque française using surviving archival elements.
This event is conceived by Marketa Uhlirova and Jarvis Cocker. Special thanks to Émilie Cauquy, Monique Faulhaber, Tamara Anderson and Rebecca Fons.
Jarvis Cocker is a musician and broadcaster from the north of England. He formed the band Pulp in 1978 whilst at secondary school. His lyric collection Mother, Brother, Lover was published by Faber in 2011, and Good Pop, Bad Pop, his first work of long-form prose, by Jonathan Cape in 2022. Cocker holds honorary doctorates from Sheffield Hallam University and St Martin’s School of Art. In 2017, he collaborated with pianist and composer Chilly Gonzales on Room 29, a song cycle inspired by Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont hotel and conceived as an homage to the golden age of cinema.
Franziska Radcliffe is a Foley artist and sound designer, and founder of Foley Farmers London, with countryside facilities in Germany. After studying sound engineering in Berlin, she established the Foley Factory in London in 2010 and began performing Foley herself in 2015. Her work brings movement, textures and environments to life through meticulously performed and recorded sounds. Her credits include Coyote vs. Acme (2026), The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018), Living (2022) and Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024), alongside numerous international screen productions. She frequently collaborates with her husband Matthias.
Richard Jones is a violist, arranger, producer and musical director for Pulp’s strings. A founding member of the Ligeti Quartet, he works across contemporary classical music and pop, bringing together instrumental performance, arranging and production. He has contributed arrangements to albums by Pet Shop Boys, Alex Turner, Anna Meredith and Jessie Ware.
Marketa Uhlirova is the Director of the Fashion in Film Festival. Her work explores the intersections between fashion, art, and the moving image. She has curated film programmes for arts and cinema venues internationally and published books including the award-winning Birds of Paradise: Costume as Cinematic Spectacle (2013). Her recent projects include the article ‘The Outskirts: Film at the Edges of Fashion’ and the co-curated film season GROUNDED: Fashion’s Entanglements with Nature.