Zapata’s Gang + The Eskimo Baby

Nielsen was perhaps surprisingly adept at broad comedy, though there’s always a transgressive twist. In Zapata’s Gang, she plays an actor, as she often would, in self-reflexive reference to her own celebrity. On location to shoot a film about bandits, Nielsen and her crew run into a real band of robbers who steal their clothes, forcing them to change into their outlaw costumes. While cross-dressed as a brigand, Nielsen gets involved with admirers of both sexes.

Restored in 2006 by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, digitised in 2014.

The Eskimo Baby features one of Nielsen’s most full-throttle comic performances in the fish-out-of-water mode. In this romp that bears no relation to geographical authenticity, Nielsen plays a young Inuit woman brought to Berlin by an Arctic explorer, marvelling at the madness of big-city life.

Restored in 2000 by Danske Filminstitut and Deutsche Kinemathek.

Live piano accompaniment will be by Cyrus Gabrysch on Fri 4 Feb and Costas Fotopoulos on Sat 12 Feb.