Z-Arts and Zion Canyon Field Institute are partnering this fall to show the silent film Ramona as silent films are meant to be shown – with live musical accompaniment.

Praised at the time as “an extraordinarily beautiful production,” Edwin Carewe’s 1928 production of Ramona was filmed on location in Zion Canyon. The film is an adaptation of Helen Hunt Jackson’s novel of the same title, and stars a young Dolores del Rio. Although the novel is set in Southern California just after the Mexican-American War, the film’s use of Zion Canyon enhances a setting that provides both eerily dramatic backdrops for the drama, as well as some of the earliest moving footage of Zion National Park. The film had been thought lost for decades, but a single surviving nitrate print was discovered in 1994 in an archive in Prague, and was restored by the Library of Congress.

Rodney Sauer, pianist and film score compiler for the Mont Alta Orchestra specializing in the pre-talkie era, will perform. Prior to the showing, cinema historian and Nevada State College professor Jeff Crouse will give a lecture on Ramona, which he has called “a holy grail of late Hollywood silent film.”

First published in 1884, Jackson’s novel is a romance featuring the young Scottish-Native American, Ramona, who experiences both love and tragedy in mid-Nineteenth century California.

Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885), an American author, petitioned the U.S. government to improve its treatment of Native American Indians. In 1882, she published A Century of Dishonor, chronicling the plight of Native Americans.

This film contains some violence and is not suitable for young children. Parental discretion advised.

Support for this event provided by The Zion Canyon Field Institute

This project is supported by Utah Arts and Museums, with funding from the State of Utah and the National Endowment for the Arts .

Support for this event provided by The National Endowment for the Arts - Art Works