The film is shown with live music composed by violinist Daniel Hoffman and performed live by Davka, the riveting Bay Area band, which blends traditional klezmer melodies with Middle Eastern rhythms and jazz improvisation. Like the group’s latest CD, “Judith,” the music feels both rooted in Old World tradition and startlingly contemporary. When violinist Daniel Hoffman first composed music inspired by the medieval Jewish myth of the golem, he had no idea that he would one day help breathe life into a classic silent film exploring the same story.

In 1998, Davka was invited to perform at Toronto’s Ashkenaz Festival of New Yiddish Culture and the artistic director asked him to compose a score for the powerful 1920 German Expressionist masterpiece; which is full of odd angled shots, inventive sets and unsettling imagery. While the film offers a fascinating re-creation of Jewish life in medieval Prague, in many ways its view of the past says more about the particular time and place “the Golem” was created. Hoffman’s score addresses the various dissonances contemporary viewers might feel watching the film.