My Cinema for the ears

Francis Dhomont's recomposes the famous »Spring Concerto« by Antonio Vivaldi

Synopsis

The work of the Franco-Canadian composer Francis Dhomont, pupil of Pierre Schaeffer, the legendary founder of musique concrète, is at the centre of this staged documentary movie. The film is about how to make music with sounds, microphone, tape and computer. Dhomont was commissioned to compose a new, another “Spring” for this film, based on the poem by Antonio Vivaldi from his composition "The Four Seasons: Spring" using the sounds mentioned by Vivaldi, bird song for example, the splashing of a stream, the murmur of the wind, rolling thunder or a dog barking.

Dhomont records these sounds (on location in Canada) in sequences which sometimes quote Jacques Tati and reprocesses them in his studio, altering and recombining them... He reflects upon the idea that composing musique concrète is very similar to the work of a film director. Rewinding, starting again, cutting, mixing and changing, processing the speed, the colours, the notes. Debussy also talked about creating pictures.

The film plays a kind of game: To approach a noise microscopically with the microphone changes the form of his perception. The noise gets more abstract and because of that actually more musical. The same is true of pictures. The closer a camera approaches an object, the more abstract it becomes: No longer one concrete picture, but a composition of colours, shapes, structures, textures. The object in question is a river, a stream, heard and seen from several perspectives, composed in ever closer perspectives, cubist, so to speak, until the perception changes into pure abstraction and then back again into its original concrete form. The aesthetic of musique concrète is translated back into a possible language of this film.

Kritiken
Exposé

Am See
Im Auto
In der Küche
Auf dem Felsen
Im Studio
Frankreich

Cast & Crew

Director

Uli Aumüller

Film Info

Video VoD / live

Age ratings

Production Company