Music for the Eyes, Film for the Ears
Image courtesy of CCCB
The films in this session materially present music among their images, without attempting to illustrate or describe it. These are works that show the visible part of the music on screen: sheet music, instruments, performers, rehearsals, recordings, recitals, and audiences. Following the notes of Robert Bresson, here the music does not accompany, sustain or reinforce the images, instead, when it is performed on screen, it structures and overturn them.
Many of the films of Manon de Boer and Jayne Parker present musicians, with their gestures, technique and instruments, as they perform certain pieces, like the ones included in this session: Sequenza, by Luciano Berio, Blues in B-flat, by Volker Heyn, Tre Canti Popolari, by Giacinto Scelsi, and 4’33”, by John Cage. Pere Portabella did something similar in the seventies, with the musician and composer Carles Santos in Play Back and Acció Santos, calling on music and its office as a central element, something he continued to do in much of his work.
The last film in the session is dedicated to the composer Christian Wolff and is one of the many in which Luke Fowler takes music and musicians as his subject. Here, the Scottish filmmaker creates a portrait of the US composer, showing, with his sketches and voice, some of the strategies he uses when composing.
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