City Symphony Live Music & Film with musician Timothy Fairless

 
Posted by Rosie Hays   ●   29 May 2023

For our fifth City Symphony Live Music & Film event on Sunday 18 June, we’re going to Germany in 1930. The film Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday) 1930 charts a Sunday in the lives of four young people from the metropolis Berlin — the city is characterised as a vibrant and sophisticated, yet dirty and confining, counterpoint to the freedom found in the countryside. The four characters escape from their rigid city lives and travel to the countryside armed with bathing suits, picnics and record players in search of frivolity.

Get tickets to City Symphony Live Music & Film series
Australian Cinémathèque, GOMA
Sunday 18 June

Production stills from People on Sunday 1930 / Director: Robert Siodmak, Edgar G Ulmer / Images courtesy: Praesens Film

People on Sunday is an astonishing first film by several filmmakers on the rise who were soon to become Berlin exiles and move to Hollywood, including Robert Siodmak, Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, Eugen Schüfftan, and Edgar Ulmer. A meld of documentary and fiction styles that became a hit, the film is full of sunlight and is a witty view of how the working class spends its leisure time, swimming, snoozing, and flirting.

The screening of People on Sunday will feature dark ambient music by experimental electronic musician Timothy Fairless who has released two albums, a soundtrack and has collaborated for theatre, television and virtual reality performances. We asked Timothy about his approach to crafting his unique live score  and what we can expect when he plays live on stage.

Rosie Hays / The film you’ll accompany is ‘People on Sunday’. What were your impressions of the film. Were there any moments that struck you?

Timothy Fairless / People on Sunday took me by surprise! Being a seemingly undefinable blend of documentary and scripted story, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But peppered amongst sequences depicting the life of Berliners, there’s a really linear narrative. What struck me the most were a few scenes demanding a sense of tension from my contemporary vantage that seem at odds with the film’s billing as a bit of a light-hearted look at life during inter-war Berlin. No spoilers, but there are some complicated relationships going on, that’s for sure!

RH / When we approach musicians to craft a live musical score for a film, we often describe the process as an act of collaboration. We ask the musician to think of the film or the filmmaker as a collaborator as you would if you were making music with someone else. Have you collaborated with another artist before or made music for a collaborative performance? I’d love if you could describe what you’ve done in the past and how the film influenced you when crafting the score.

TF / Collaboration has been a big part of my practice. I’ve worked with filmmakers, other musicians, and visual artists. I’ve even worked on site-specific sound and visual installations where I’ve viewed the environment or space as a collaborator, in that I allow it to influence the work I’m making in it. Recently, I’ve had an ongoing collaboration with visual artist Henri van Noordenburg, who makes images by scraping away ink on paper with various knives and abrasive objects. It’s a visceral, audible thing. In our performance, we create a loop where I take a feed of the sound of him working, manipulate it based on his rhythms, and he and the audience hears the result. This affects the direction of Henri’s work, and the cycle repeats.

Viewing the film as the instigator of a collaboration meant deciding which sonic textures I could craft that capture the intention of the filmmakers, but how I could use these to create an appropriate modern response for the audience.

RH / Where did you start when thinking about what the sound would be for the film?

TF / For People on Sunday, the environment and population of Berlin and its surrounds become a bit of a character in itself. So I definitely considered how I can evoke that sense in the score, whilst still paying attention to the emotional hooks in the story. I wanted to respond to the sense of pace, with depictions of machine-like regularity of weekday life contrasting with the languid speed of Sunday.

RH / I’d love to hear what style of music you’ll play, what instruments you’ll use and what the audience should expect from your performance.

TF / My work is ambient and immersive, and usually a little dark. For People on Sunday though, I’m illuminating most of those dark spots to make something expansive and beautiful.

I was fortunate to visit Berlin last year, and made field recordings in some of the city locations depicted in the film. These recordings will be woven into the sound in some subtle and not-so-subtle ways, using processing techniques I’ve developed over the years. In addition to synthesizers and piano, bowed acoustic guitar forms a key textural component. It has a cello-like quality, but sounds a bit brittle and very organic.

For more information about the films and the musicians see our event listing for Live Music & Film: People on Sunday.

Rosie Hays is Associate Curator, Australian Cinémathèque, QAGOMA

Production stills from People on Sunday 1930 / Director: Robert Siodmak, Edgar G Ulmer / Images courtesy: Praesens Film

Upcoming live music & film

Live Music & Film: People on Sunday 1930
Live Music & Film: The Poetic Cities of Joris Ivens 1929
Live Music & Film: Calcutta 1969
Live Music & Film: Berlin, Symphony of a Great City 1927
Live Music & Film: Nothing But Time 1921–2012
Live Music & Film: Man With a Movie Camera (with violin) 1929

City Symphony special ticket offer

See the full series and save! Buy 5 to 9 tickets and receive a 10% discount. Buy 10 tickets and receive a 20% discount. Get tickets

The Australian Cinémathèque
The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) is the only Australian art gallery with purpose-built facilities dedicated to film and the moving image. The Australian Cinémathèque at GOMA provides an ongoing program of film and video that you’re unlikely to see elsewhere, offering a rich and diverse experience of the moving image, showcasing the work of influential filmmakers and international cinema, rare 35mm prints, recent restorations and silent films with live musical accompaniment by local musicians or on the Gallery’s Wurlitzer organ originally installed in Brisbane’s Regent Theatre in November 1929.

Featured image: (left) Production still from People on Sunday 1930; Dir: Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer; Image courtesy: Praesens Film / (right) Timothy Fairless; Photograph: © The artist

#QAGOMA

Five unmissable films featuring Juliette Binoche

 
Posted by Rosie Hays   ●   22 May 2023

Our focus on the incredible performances of French actress Juliette Binoche is halfway through. Here are five films not to miss before they leave the big screen at the Australian Cinémathèque, Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane.

#1
Clouds of Sils Maria 2014

Boasting powerhouse performances by two actresses, Clouds of Sils Maria, is set in the world of film stars. Juliette Binoche plays acclaimed actress Maria Enders alongside Kristen Stewart as her burdened yet discerning personal assistant. Maria is offered a juicy role that sees her confronting the notion that she is now being offered characters that are ‘older women’. French auteur director Olivier Assayas turns a story that, in another director’s hands, could easily have been only about the trials and whims of celebrity into a powerful meditation on aging, artistic integrity and the emotional vulnerability of creating art. Screens: 7.50pm, Friday 2 June

Take a look at this tense scene between two acting talents on their game.

Production still from Clouds of Sils Maria 2014 / Director: Olivier Assayas / Image courtesy: Pinnacle Films

#2
Trois couleurs: Bleu (Three Colours: Blue) 1993

A film that is described as a masterpiece with good reason, Three Colours: Blue features a searing performance by Binoche. She plays a grieving widow who wakes up in a hospital bed following a car crash only to find out the devastating news that her husband and child have died. The first of the ‘Three Colours’ trilogy, in which each draws on a colour of the French flag to articulate ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity, Blue interweaves colour as motif to explore of personal liberation. You may have seen this film on the small screen, but it really is another experience again seeing it in a darkened cinema fully immersed in the sound and vision. We’re screening a new 4K digital restoration. Screens: 6.00pm, Friday 26 May

Production still from Three Colours: Blue 1993 / Director: Krzysztof Kieślowski / Image courtesy : mk2 Films

#3
Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge (Flight of the Red Balloon) 2007

A film commissioned by the French museum Musée d’Orsay to commemorate their 20th anniversary. Lauded Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao Hsien crafts not only an homage to Paris but one of France’s most iconic films: The Red Balloon 1956 by Albert Lamorisse. A mysterious red balloon follows seven-year-old Simon through the streets of Paris in this beautifully shot portrait of a city, childhood and the process of making art. Juliette Binoche plays Suzanne, an unconventional artist who hires a young film student, Song Fang, to help care for her son and run their household. Screens: 12.30pm, Sunday 11 June and 8.20pm, Friday 16 June

Production still from Flight of the Red Balloon 2007 / Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien / Image courtesy: Playtime Group

#4
Mauvais Sang (Bad Blood) 1986

Threatening henchmen, a plot to steal an antidote to a dangerous virus, a parachute jump out of a plane – all these are present in Bad Blood – but at its heart, this is a film about the exhilaration and exquisite heartache of young love. French filmmaker Leos Carax creates a raft of innovative and mesmerising images to tell his gangster-cum-romance story. The film features captivating early career performances by Julie Delpy and Juliette Binoche alongside actor and dancer Denis Lavant who is truly luminous on screen. Watch out for his incredible midnight dance sequence to David Bowie’s ‘Modern Love’. We’re screening a beautiful 4K digital restoration that’s hot off the press and does justice to the original. Screens: 12.40pm, Saturday 3 June

Never mind that this trailer isn’t subtitled, just enjoy the images

Production still from Bad Blood 1983 / Director: Leos Carax / Image courtesy: Playtime Group

#5
Vision 2018

French writer Jeanne (Juliette Binoche) travels to an ancient forest in Japan seeking an elusive plant said to possess profound healing qualities. Set deep in the mountains of Japan’s Nara Prefecture, Binoche crafts a beguiling performance, which beautifully suits a narrative that leans into mystery and mysticism. I initially watched Vision on a small screen, but having the chance to see it in a cinema transformed the film for me: the sensuality of the storytelling was highlighted and hidden depths emerged. Japanese writer-director Naomi Kawase envelops the viewer in the sights and sounds of her local forests building a heady atmosphere that aims for a similar feeling to that of ‘forest bathing’. It’s a fascinating counterpoint in Binoche’s career. Screens: 8.20pm, Wednesday 7 June

Production still from Vision 2018 / Director: Naomi Kawase / Image courtesy: Elle Driver

Rosie Hays is Associate Curator, Australian Cinémathèque, QAGOMA.

‘Juliette Binoche’ is a ticketed film program screening at the Australian Cinémathèque, GOMA from 28 April to 18 June. Visit the website to purchase tickets

The Australian Cinémathèque
The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) is the only Australian art gallery with purpose-built facilities dedicated to film and the moving image. The Australian Cinémathèque at GOMA provides an ongoing program of film and video that you’re unlikely to see elsewhere, offering a rich and diverse experience of the moving image, showcasing the work of influential filmmakers and international cinema, rare 35mm prints, recent restorations and silent films with live musical accompaniment by local musicians or on the Gallery’s Wurlitzer organ originally installed in Brisbane’s Regent Theatre in November 1929.

Featured image: Production still from Three Colours: Blue 1993 / Director: Krzysztof Kieślowski / Image courtesy : mk2 Films

#QAGOMA

City Symphony Live Music & Film with electronic, experimental musician Madeleine Cocolas

 
Posted by Rosie Hays   ●   7 May 2023

On Sunday 28 May at the Australian Cinémathèque, Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, our fourth City Symphony Live Music & Film event features the music of composer and musician Madeleine Cocolas. Madeleine is crafting a live score for the films boasting pulsating synthesisers, lush soundscapes, experimental electronics and field recordings to subtly evoke the tenor of each city explored in the four films screening.

Get tickets to City Symphony Live Music & Film series

‘Live Music & Film: City Visions, Cairo to New York’ brings together a selection of diverse cinema from across the world. Daybreak Express 1953 is a short delight at only 5 minutes long and showcases the city of New York waking up. It’s the first film made by acclaimed director D.A. Pennebaker (who later went on to make music documentaries — most notably Don’t Look Back 1967 with Bob Dylan). A Skewed Conversation 2019 captures Cairo as a contemporary dancer uses the physical space around her to influence her moves navigating busy highways, back alleys, cafes, and street scenes of the bustling Egyptian capital. Visions of a City 1978 deftly uses reflection — from shop windows, car bumper bars and busses sliding past the camera — to uniquely present city life. A Propos de Nice (On the Subject of Nice) 1930, made by influential French filmmaker Jean Vigo, subversively juxtaposes behind the scenes hardships of working-class life alongside upper-class enjoyment of the popular French tourist town Nice. At turns elegant, raucous and yet sometimes sobering, A Propos de Nice is a fascinating look at French fashion, habits and culture of the 1930s.

Production still from Daybreak Express 1953 / Director: D A Pennebaker/ Image courtesy: Pennebaker Hegedus Films

We spoke with electronic musician Madeleine Cocolas about her preparations for crafting these live scores and what moved her within the films to create soundscapes for each.

Rosie Hays / Your selection of films are four short films. They’re fairly different types of films. What were your first impressions of the films?

Madeleine Cocolas / The films are indeed very different which was great as it meant I could carve a unique sound for each individual one.

For Daybreak Express 1953 I was inspired by the joyfulness I felt when watching the film. My hope is that my music conveys a sense of joy and wonder for the day ahead. I have used some of the original train sounds and sampled them throughout my score, including in the percussive elements that come in later which I feel helps tie the music to the visuals.

Director: D A Pennebaker ‘Daybreak Express’ 1953 

Production still from Daybreak Express 1953 / Director: D A Pennebaker / Image courtesy: Pennebaker Hegedus Films

For A Skewed Conversation 2019 I was struck by the rhythm of the film and in many ways that was set by the dancing of the protagonist. This film felt like it needed some rhythmic elements to support the dancing so strong percussive rhythms became a feature of this score.

Directors: Eman Hussein, Ahmed Hamed ‘A Skewed Conversation’ 2019 

Production still from A Skewed Conversation 2019 / Directors: Eman Hussein, Ahmed Hamed/ Image courtesy: Ahmed Hamed

A Propos de Nice (On the Subject of Nice) 1930 felt like it had a strong narrative arc which set up scenes of extreme wealth and then contrasted that wealth and luxury with scenes of poverty, which I found to be very poignant. The last third of the film brings back scenes of extreme wealth but these scenes are tarnished by what we have previously seen and therefore take on darker tones. I also felt this film had a few absurdist moments to it and really wanted to convey that in the score as well. I composed the score to this film with the narrative arc in mind, so that the first and third ‘acts’ had a feeling of careless abandon whilst the middle act was much darker with more emotional resonance.

Director: Jean Vigo ‘A Propos de Nice’ 1927 

Production still from A Propos de Nice 1927 / Director: Jean Vigo / Image courtesy: Gaumont International

Visions of a City 1978 felt quite textural and introspective to me. I thought it was so interesting that it was filmed through different reflective surfaces so that the viewer is almost experiencing things indirectly and second hand. I wanted to this score to feel a little more introspective and detached as a result.

Director: Larry Jordan ‘Visions of a City’ 1978 

Production still from Visions of a City 1978 / Director: Larry Jordan / Image courtesy: Light Cone

RH / One of my absolute favourite films in the City Symphony program is Daybreak Express. This has a very distinctive soundtrack already — it’s a great Duke Ellington song. Was this daunting? Did you watch the film without sound or did listening to the music give you inspiration?

MC / I watched the film once with Duke Ellington’s soundtrack which is of course such a great piece and works really well with the film. After that I jumped straight into bringing my vision to the film. I didn’t find the process of composing a score for Daybreak Express to be daunting, the reason being that although the original score is so fantastic I decided to do something entirely different for my score. I would have found it much more daunting if I were to try to create a jazz score for it, but because I’m doing something very different to the original it’s much easier to feel free to create your own vision without being concerned about it being compared.

RH / You’ve crafted a live score for a film previously. I believe it was in the United States? I’d love to hear which film it was and how you approached the score for a well-known film.

MC / When I lived in Seattle I was commissioned by the North West Film Forum to compose and perform a live score to a silent film of my choosing. I chose the classic Hitchcock film The Birds which doesn’t actually have a traditional score (although notably the bird sounds were created using a Mixtur-Trautonium synthesiser). I absolutely adore ‘The Birds’, and whilst it’s perfect as it is, it was a wonderful process creating my own score for it.  Rather than creating a traditional score I created a reverb laden synth score to bring my own vision to the film.

RH / I’d love to hear what style of music you’ll play, what instruments you’ll use and how you decided on what you would craft for the films.

MC / Each film will have a slightly different musical flavour, but generally speaking they will be a mix of synth, electronics, field recordings, keys and ambient vocals.  I’ll be using a synthesiser, a laptop to play processed sounds and electronics and I’ll also be singing as well. The music for all four films could be broadly categorised as having experimental electronic, post classical and ambient influences.

For more information about the films and the musicians see our event listing for Live Music & Film: City Visions, Cairo to New York

Rosie Hays is Associate Curator, Australian Cinémathèque, QAGOMA

Upcoming live music & film

Live Music & Film: City Visions, Cairo to New York 1930–2019
Live Music & Film: People on Sunday 1930
Live Music & Film: The Poetic Cities of Joris Ivens 1929
Live Music & Film: Calcutta 1969
Live Music & Film: Berlin, Symphony of a Great City 1927
Live Music & Film: Nothing But Time 1921–2012
Live Music & Film: Man With a Movie Camera (with violin) 1929

City Symphony special ticket offer

See the full series and save! Buy 5 to 9 tickets and receive a 10% discount. Buy 10 tickets and receive a 20% discount. Get tickets

The Australian Cinémathèque
The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) is the only Australian art gallery with purpose-built facilities dedicated to film and the moving image. The Australian Cinémathèque at GOMA provides an ongoing program of film and video that you’re unlikely to see elsewhere, offering a rich and diverse experience of the moving image, showcasing the work of influential filmmakers and international cinema, rare 35mm prints, recent restorations and silent films with live musical accompaniment by local musicians or on the Gallery’s Wurlitzer organ originally installed in Brisbane’s Regent Theatre in November 1929.

Featured image: (left) Production still from Visions of a City 1978, Director: Larry Jordan, Image courtesy: Light Cone / (right) Madeleine Cocolas, Photograph: Vanessa at Vivid Visual

#QAGOMA

The many faces of Juliette Binoche

 
Posted by Rosie Hays   ●   30 Apr 2023

Juliette Binoche is one of the most sought-after and celebrated actors of her generation, building her career on a foundation of fearless, authentic and sensitive performances. At Brisbane’s Australian Cinémathèque, Gallery of Modern Art from 28 April–18 June 2023, QAGOMA presents a survey of Juliette Binoche’s works from the 1980s to the present day.

Buy Tickets Juliette Binoche Film Program
GOMA, until 18 June 2023

Crafting a screen persona that embodies meaning throughout her projects, Juliette Binoche is a unique actor who brings strong authorship not only to the role she plays but the whole film. Boasting an extraordinary career of nearly 70 feature films over five decades, Binoche has won a multitude of ‘Best Actress’ awards, including two Academy Awards, Britain’s BAFTA, France’s César Award, and is the first actress to hold the ‘triple crown’ — winning Best Actress at the Berlin, Venice and Cannes film festivals.

‘Truth in fiction. There’s an expression, I think it’s a French expression: “You’re an actress, you know how to lie.” For me it’s always been the contrary: “You’re an actor, you know the truth”. You know how to play truth.’1
Juliette Binoche

Binoche’s career in film began in 1984 with the French New Wave maestro Jean-Luc Godard. Hail Mary 1985 is a modern retelling of the Virgin birth. Though she spent six months on set, her scenes in the final film are only a handful. It was her role in André Téchiné’s Rendez-vous 1985 which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival the same year, that truly launched her career and garnered her first nomination for the French film awards — the César Awards — for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

Production still from The Lovers on the Bridge 1991 / Director: Leos Carax / Image courtesy: Studio Canal

A key creative relationship that shaped Binoche’s work was with director Leos Carax across two films: Mauvais Sang (Bad Blood) 1986 and the iconic Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (The Lovers on the Bridge) 1991. Binoche committed fully to these productions and in the case of The Lovers on the Bridge it was a three year long production in which she turned down many other high-profile directors to support Carax’s vision. Both films are romantically bold imaginings of ‘amour fou’ (mad love) with Binoche central to the story, her face often filling the frame capturing the anguish, the passion and openness of her character. The Lovers on the Bridge is artistic triumph. Binoche delivers a wild, free-wheeling performance as Michèle a young, homeless artist sketching on the Paris streets looking for a place to sleep. She appears alongside the fiercely magnetic actor and dancer Denis Lavant. Michèle’s drawings are Binoche’s own work — the actor began her creative career as a performer and visual artist and continues her painting practice today.

While she had made films outside of France prior to the 1990s (such as her first English language role in The Unbearable Lightness of Being 1988 alongside Daniel Day-Lewis), it was in that decade that Binoche truly expanded her international career: as a femme fatale in Damage 1992 (with Jeremy Irons), directed by French New Wave director Louis Malle; and in Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient 1996, which cemented her, internationally, and for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Production still from Three Colours: Blue 1993 / Director: Krzysztof Kieślowski / Image courtesy: mk2 Films

Binoche returned to France to star in the first of filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski’s ‘Three Colours’ trilogy — Three Colours: Blue 1993. Hailed a masterpiece, the film was a thundering critical success. Binoche’s character is Julie, a woman who is living in the devastating aftermath following the deaths of her husband and daughter. Julie resolves to do and feel nothing in the face of such great loss. Binoche artfully conveys the nuanced conflict between this desired state of non-being and her emotions simmering under the surface. A finely crafted, cerebral, anguished performance that was undeniably powerful, Three Colours: Blue elevated Binoche as a key symbol of French femininity.

Throughout the 1980s and 90s, a romantic streak developed in French cinema. Binoche helped in the crafting of the French romantic ideal and portrayals of sensuality on screen. One of these roles was with Chantal Akerman, who Binoche had long hoped to work with. The romantic comedy Un divan à New York (A Couch in New York) 1996 was a departure from Akerman’s usual groundbreaking feminist cinema. In it, Binoche plays French dancer Béatrice, who undertakes an apartment swap with an American psychologist (William Hurt). She exchanges her ramshackle Parisian apartment for a slick New York residence, complete with concierge. Misunderstandings and emotional entanglements ensue.

Production still from Flight of the Red Balloon 2007 / Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien / Image courtesy: Madman Entertainment

Binoche’s career trajectory is one of creative curiosity. Following her desire to work with brilliant directors and demanding scripts, Binoche forged professional partnerships throughout the 2000s with a remarkable array of artistic collaborators. These included Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, notably his exploration of female actors and spectatorship in Shirin 2008 and his reinvention of the Tuscan romance in the bittersweet Certified Copy 2010. In 2007, she worked with one of the most influential Asian film directors — Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-hsien — in his Paris-set Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge (Flight of the Red Balloon) 2007. Binoche grounds Japanese director Naomi Kawase’s spiritually questing film Vision 2018 with an earthy, authentic performance.

Production still from Certified Copy 2010 / Director: Abbas Kiarostami / Image courtesy: Madman Entertainment

Two of the most defining films of this period are her roles with provocative Austrian director Michael Haneke, whose works explore the darker side of human nature. Code Unknown 2000 and Hidden 2005 are politically and morally charged films, with Binoche deftly managing the precarious balance, within the story, between a character who is charismatic and engaging yet not always sympathetic. For an actor who could very respectably have continued a trajectory of exclusively playing accessible, charming roles, instead she pursues those that stimulate and challenge, pushing her boundaries and the audience’s expectations. More recently, this has been the case with directors such as French heavyweights Olivier Assayas, Bruno Dumont and Claire Denis.

Take, for example, Camille Claudel 1915, made in 2013 by Bruno Dumont, which stars Binoche as the famous French sculptor of the title. Dumont is highly respected, and known for making daring and challenging films. Prior to making Camille Claudel 1915, one of Dumont’s signature modes of filmmaking was to work only with non-professional actors. Knowing this, Binoche — one of the most famous actors in France — contacted Dumont and outlined her desire to work with him. Following Camille Claudel 1915, their next project was Ma Loute (Slack Bay) 2016. Binoche’s bolshie performance took the audience by surprise; the comedy was so off-kilter funny it prompted Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw to comment, ‘Everyone seems to have drunk their bodyweight in absinthe’.

Binoche has completed three films with the lauded filmmaker Clare Denis. From their first film, High Life 2018, through to their latest, about a love triangle Avec amour et Acharnement (Both Sides of the Blade) 2022, Denis — known for crafting whip-smart and muscular films — worked with Binoche to play with audience expectations of the actor’s onscreen persona as someone who is intelligent and beautiful, in order to craft morally ambiguous, complex, nuanced characters.

Juliette Binoche consistently makes courageous choices in the pursuit of performances that are vital, compelling and changing. Her ability to bring vulnerability, authenticity and complete commitment to a role has resulted in a stunning body of work.

Production still from Clouds of Sils Maria 2014 / Director: Olivier Assayas / Image courtesy: Pinnacle Films
Production still from Let the Sunshine In 2017 / Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien / Image courtesy: Madman Entertainment

Rosie Hays is Associate Curator, Australian Cinémathèque, QAGOMA

Endnote
1 Juliette Binoche, quoted on The Screen Show, ABC Radio National, 7 May 2015, https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/finalcut/juliette-binoche-on-acting, -working-with-kristen-stewart/6451824, accessed February 2023.

‘Juliette Binoche’ screens at the Australian Cinémathèque, GOMA, from 28 April to 18 June.

The Australian Cinémathèque
The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) is the only Australian art gallery with purpose-built facilities dedicated to film and the moving image. The Australian Cinémathèque at GOMA provides an ongoing program of film and video that you’re unlikely to see elsewhere, offering a rich and diverse experience of the moving image, showcasing the work of influential filmmakers and international cinema, rare 35mm prints, recent restorations and silent films with live musical accompaniment by local musicians or on the Gallery’s Wurlitzer organ originally installed in Brisbane’s Regent Theatre in November 1929.

#QAGOMA

City Symphony Live Music & Film with world music, folk electronic duo Zemzemeh

 
Posted by Rosie Hays   ●   4 Apr 2023

On Sunday 30 April, our third City Symphony Live Music & Film screening features a selection of rarely screened short films. Within these films street photographers capture cheeky kids playing in New York’s East Harlem in the 1940s, meanwhile in the film Bridges Go Round 1958 the camera dances with a city skyline, and two films showcase their city with the aim to tempt tourists to their shores — pre-war Tokyo and a picturesque Stockholm on the edge of the Baltic Sea.

Get tickets to City Symphony Live Music & Film series

The films have been sourced from across the world: the National Film Archive of Japan, the Swedish Film Institute and film collectives that archive the work of independent filmmakers. For such a diverse array of filmmaking that utilize the City Symphony style, we’ve asked the duo ‘Zemzemeh’ to craft new scores for each film. Zemzemeh is comprised of musicians Greta Kelly and Siyavash Doostkhah, who both have a wealth of musical knowledge and performance experience across many different musical styles from the mystical music of Iran, to hip-hop, to electronic sound installations, Turkish sacred music, Czech folk and more.

Director: Arne Sucksdorff ‘Symphony of a City’ 1947

Production still from Symphony of a City 1947 / Director: Arne Sucksdorff / Image courtesy: Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm

Director: Shirley Clarke ‘Bridges Go Round’ 1958 

Production still from Bridges Go Round 1958 / Director: Shirley Clarke / Image courtesy: The Film-Makers’ Cooperative, New York

We spoke with musicians Greta Kelly and Siyavash Doostkhah about their approach to making new scores for these films and the incredible array of instruments they will play on stage.

Rosie Hays / Zemzemeh is a duo. I’d love to hear about the different musical sensibilities you each bring to the performance.

Siyavash Doostkhah / With a diverse musical background ranging from ancient Persian ritual music played on Tanbour to improvised electronic music, I aspire to move freely between the old and the new in my musical explorations.

Greta Kelly / My great-grandfather and great-grandmother, Fritz and Lilian Hopp used to accompany, on violin and piano, silent films at the Regent and Wintergarden cinemas. I’ve always wondered how the film’s emotions inspired their melodies and the rhythm of the editing informed their tempo. My grandfather started me on classical violin, I learnt Scandi folk as a teenager living iin Sweden, and Moravian folk while living in Czechia in my 20’s. In later travels I studied Turkish, Persian and Iraqi classical, sacred and folk music. My Brissy days have been a mix of lo-fi rock, dub and hip-hop.

RH / What music and/or instruments can the audience expect for this performance?

GK / I’ll be playing violin, shah kaman, theremini, and vibra-tone. The experimental techniques of some of the movies elicit more adventurous sounds; layering images inspire live looping; monochrome colourisation elicits flautando and harmonics.

SD / I’ll be playing tanbour and analog/digital synthesisers. I’ll also use software to play some processed sounds.

RH / Zemzemeh will be crafting a new live score for four short films. What did you think of the films on viewing them?

GK&SD / Scenes in Bridges go Round and Tokyo Symphony which celebrate technology and urbanity evoke electronic responses. Stockholm Symphony and In the Streets’ focus on characters and relationships inspire more melodic themes.

Both the evolution of the city and the film medium capture the familiar and the new.  Kids will always play in the streets (but we haven’t seen them do it with socks filled with flour).  The more experimental film techniques elicit more adventurous sound palettes.

RH / How do you approach making music for four short films? Will you craft completely different musical styles or build a musical thread that links all four together?

SD / Although the city is the common thread in these four movies, they are four separate films and not made with one another in mind. We felt that the focus should remain on the diversity of the films and our music sitting in the background reflecting our sonic emotional interpretation of various scenes. Attempts can be made to classify our work into a musical genre or style such as ‘electroacoustic world’. However, similar to the difficulty of arriving at consensus about terms such as ‘multiculturalism’, so is the diversity of the music that we blend.

GK / The moods of each scene inform the modes I play in. For example, the hopefulness of In the Streets elicits Mahur, a Persian dastgah closely associated with the western major scale; the detached architecture of Bridges go Round makes me feel like playing Hicaz, an Arabic makam associated with feelings of separation.

RH / Has Zemzemeh crafted music for films or performances in the past, where do you start when thinking about making music for a particular event or piece of art?

SD / Our music is extensively improvised, we enjoy juxtaposing ancient acoustic music with modern electronica. Being a duo has allowed us to more easily bring our individual responses to a film/event leading us to explore common ground that we refine into a musical piece. Crafting music for a movie or an event gives us a framework to focus our experimentation on, building layers of sound that can seamlessly assemble with existing visual or environmental context to present a new structure.

GK / It’s great to start with the story or mood and develop the music in response to the narrative. Zemzemeh’s recent project. Amphisonics with Panos Curos and a number of musicians, scientists and a poet began with the songs and stories of frogs.

For more information about the films and the musicians see our event listing for Live Music & Film: Harlem Streets to Stockholm Symphony

Zemzemeh

Zemzemeh / Image courtesy: The artists

Upcoming live music & film

Live Music & Film: Harlem Streets to Stockholm Symphony 1937
Live Music & Film: City Visions, Cairo to New York 1930–2019
Live Music & Film: People on Sunday 1930
Live Music & Film: The Poetic Cities of Joris Ivens 1929
Live Music & Film: Calcutta 1969
Live Music & Film: Berlin, Symphony of a Great City 1927
Live Music & Film: Nothing But Time 1921–2012
Live Music & Film: Man With a Movie Camera (with violin) 1929

City Symphony special ticket offer Get tickets

See the full series and save! Buy 5 to 9 tickets and receive at 10% discount. Buy 10 tickets and receive a 20% discount.

The Australian Cinémathèque
The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) is the only Australian art gallery with purpose-built facilities dedicated to film and the moving image. The Australian Cinémathèque at GOMA provides an ongoing program of film and video that you’re unlikely to see elsewhere, offering a rich and diverse experience of the moving image, showcasing the work of influential filmmakers and international cinema, rare 35mm prints, recent restorations and silent films with live musical accompaniment by local musicians or on the Gallery’s Wurlitzer organ originally installed in Brisbane’s Regent Theatre in November 1929.

Featured image: (left) Production still from Symphony of a City 1947. Image courtesy: Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm / (right) Zemzemeh. Image courtesy: The artists

#QAGOMA

City Symphony Live Music & Film with Matt Hsu’s Obscure Orchestra

 
Posted by Rosie Hays   ●   14 Mar 2023

The 18-piece band — Matt Hsu’s Obscure Orchestra — is the musical accompaniment to the lyrical Slovakian documentary Lines 2021 on Sunday 26 March in our next ‘City Symphony’ Live Music & Film series.

While the City Symphony film movement began in the 1920s, this contemporary film, released a hundred years after the movement began, speaks to our ongoing fascination with our urban spaces and a desire to explore how we live together.

Live Music & Film #3: A trio of City Symphony films from Harlem streets to Stockholm accompanied by Zemzemeh

Get tickets to City Symphony Live Music & Film series

Director: Barbora Sliepková ‘Lines’ 2021 

Production still from Lines 2021 / Director: Barbora Sliepková / Image courtesy: Hitchhiker Cinema

Lines is a delightful portrait of the post-communist city Bratislava. Director Barbora Sliepková crafts a loving tribute to the city surrounds, its idiosyncratic inhabitants, and their beloved pets. The film focuses on the human experience of a city, following a wide variety of people throughout their lives. One person stayed with me long after the film ended. He’s a musician who’s a little melancholy in his loneliness yet another facet of his personality is a curiosity for city sounds. He moves through the film with an openness and vitality that’s inspiring. The one character embodies how the film views its subjects.

I wanted to pair Matt Hsu’s Obscure Orchestra with Lines because both the band and the film have a strong sense of play and what I see as an expansive and warm view of humanity.

Matt Hsu’s Obscure Orchestra

Matt Hsu’s Obscure Orchestra / Photograph: Rod Pilbeam

We asked Matt Hsu about the forthcoming event and his approach to making music.

Rosie Hays / I love the ethos of the Obscure Orchestra that celebrates inclusion and diversity. I’d love to hear more about your intentions, what this means for the Orchestra, its musicians, and the music you make. 

Matt Hsu / Thank you! I’m really proud of the community we’ve built and so happy the spirit of inclusion is stuck there as the core kernel. I feel like that ethos is a natural extension of sharply experiencing not belonging, the relief of feeling accepted, and then beyond that the pure comfort of difference not mattering at all. Consciously and unconsciously, people who share those feelings have been swept into the orbit of Obscure Orchestra, and I’m in awe of the BIPOC, First Nations, disabled, queer, trans and non-binary artists who are in this with me.

I’ve found that arts and community projects about ‘diversity’ but not led by that community tend to, with the best intentions, veer toward the negative, to trauma and racism etc. As a BIPOC-led project, I’m interested in celebrating identity and finding the goofy, bright, nuanced experiences of people that isn’t just about our worst day.

RH / Matt Hsu’s Obscure Orchestra performs in different iterations from a solo musician to bigger configurations. How many musicians can we expect at your Australian Cinémathèque performance at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) and what type of instruments will be played?

MH / Yes! Obscure Orchestra began as an exhaust valve for my solo multi-instrumental tinkerings, but it’s well and truly grown beyond that to a Big Ass Band™. I’m so lucky to gang up with folks that geek out on those same things. We’ll have 18 musicians for this show at GOMA, from all different musical backgrounds; self-taught multi-instrumentalists, indie kids, queer noise music, young people keeping non-Western music traditions alive, found object experimenters, and renegade ex-classical prodigies.

We’ll have found objects and percussion, double bass, harp, hulusi, mbira, gamelan, vibraphone, horns, strings, woodwind and musical saw.

Matt Hsu / Photograph: Rod Pilbeam

RH / The process for accompanying a film is not usually something that a band or musician is asked to do. What were your initial thoughts on viewing the film ‘Lines’?

MH / I thought it was beautiful. It’s an honour to be making music for such a thoughtful and gorgeously shot film that shows the unassuming complexity of everyday life, and the little joys and heartaches found in it. People navigating the built design of structured and sometimes stark environments but trying to forge meaningful relationships and lives in them, is so interesting to me.

I’ve been gradually dipping more and more toes into composing (I’ll be composing for La Boite’s production Poison of Polygamy next), so it’s an absolute honour to be composing for GOMA, a space I love and such shining beacon of art in Meanjin’s cultural landscape.

RH / How do you respond to the film, what emotional elements would you like to highlight in the music you’ll craft?

MH / I think we’ll really enjoy taking notice of the unspoken kinship between people and that beautiful relationship to place, moments where music punctuate everyday life in the narrative.

RH / Finally, I’d love to hear about the musical styles we should expect to hear in your performance.

MH / It’ll be eclectic and a lot of fun! We’ll be bringing some of that Obscure Orchestra sound but repurposing it for some nuanced, contemplative, experimental feels, with orchestra friends freed up to try different timbres. There’ll be some found object sounds, experimental orchestral flavours, noise music moments, shimmering mallets and held drones, a bit of ethereal harp and woodwinds, a touch of bossa, woodwind and bamboo textures. It’ll be fun and exciting for us!

Rosie Hays is Associate Curator, Australian Cinémathèque, QAGOMA

Matt Hsu’s Obscure Orchestra in rehearsals / Photograph: Rosie Hays © QAGOMA

Upcoming live music & film

Live Music & Film: Lines 2021
Live Music & Film: Harlem Streets to Stockholm Symphony 1937
Live Music & Film: City Visions, Cairo to New York 1930–2019
Live Music & Film: People on Sunday 1930
Live Music & Film: The Poetic Cities of Joris Ivens 1929
Live Music & Film: Calcutta 1969
Live Music & Film: Berlin, Symphony of a Great City 1927
Live Music & Film: Nothing But Time 1921–2012
Live Music & Film: Man With a Movie Camera (with violin) 1929

City Symphony special ticket offer

See the full series and save!
Buy 5 to 9 tickets and receive at 10% discount.
Buy 10 tickets and receive a 20% discount.

Get tickets

#QAGOMA