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SCHOENBERG and BACH by STRAUB-HUILLET
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The 10th
Lisbon & Estoril Film Festival presents a selection of films by Jean-Marie
Straub and Danièle Huillet whose raw material is Music, the music of Bach and
Schoenberg in particular.
INTRO TO ARNOLD SCHOENBERG’S “ACCOMPANIMET TO A CINEMATOGRAPHIC SCENE”
and
MOSES AND AARON
Friday, November 11th, 16:00
Medeia Monumental, Room 1
Presentation by Cyril Neyrat
In their short film Einleitung zu Arnold Schoenbergs Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene (Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg’s “Accompaniment to a Cinematic Scene”), Jean-Marie Straub stares at us while he explains the great deal of detail with which Schoenberg wrote the instructions for his operas. His objective, he tells us, was to “contain chaos”, a chaos which he saw around him, but in Música de acompañamiento por una escena del film (written in Germany between 1929 and 1930), Schoenberg, a Jew, leaves only four words “Menacing danger, Fear, Catastrophe”. His pessimism, a result of the anti-Semitism of which he was a victim until his exile to the United States, summon the perplexity which he expressed to his peers: “Why is an Aryan judged by the standards of Goethe, Schopenhauer and so on? Why don’t people say that Jews are like Mahler, Altenberg, Schoenberg and so many others?” Schoenberg’s struggle is a lonely one and is imbued with the clarity of a man who would have to be proven right by the justice of the future. (Sabrina D. Marques)
THE CHRONICLE OF ANNA MAGDALENA BACH
Saturday, November 12th, 16:00
Medeia Monumental, Room 4
Conversation with Pascal Bonitzer
Few filmmakers have, like Straub-Huillet, made music such a prominent centerpiece of their work. Their third feature film, The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach, 1968) was the realization of one of Jean-Marie Straub’s oldest projects. The rigorous preliminary work would demand ten years of detailed idealization: this (de) construction proposed to use the cinematic medium to face the unique project of “using music neither as an accompaniment nor commentary, but as aesthetic matter”, as the shaping of the narrative and the mise-en-scéne. A dialectical relation between several rhythms substantiates the unique density of a film which, between symphonies and cantatas, still manages to pursue a constant aesthetic purification. “My biggest fear in Bachfilm”, Straub admits “was that the music would create peaks in the film: it should instead stay on the same level as the rest.” (Sabrina D. Marques)
FROM TODAY TO TOMORROW
Sunday, November 13th, 14:00
Medeia Monumental, Room 4
Just like they had done in Bachfilm, while shooting From Today to Tomorrow (Von Heute auf Morgen, 1996) Straub and Huillet defend direct sound unconditionally, seeking to “capture the singing and the singing body simultaneously.” It is thus that they created a body of work directed towards performing the feat of softening the edges of the medium, uniting sound and image (and presenting the manipulative practice of cutting and gluing arbitrarily during editing – a post-production trick that Straub called making “sound soup”). (Sabrina D. Marques)
INTRO TO ARNOLD SCHOENBERG’S “ACCOMPANIMET TO A CINEMATOGRAPHIC SCENE”
and
MOSES AND AARON
Friday, November 11th, 16:00
Medeia Monumental, Room 1
Presentation by Cyril Neyrat
In their short film Einleitung zu Arnold Schoenbergs Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene (Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg’s “Accompaniment to a Cinematic Scene”), Jean-Marie Straub stares at us while he explains the great deal of detail with which Schoenberg wrote the instructions for his operas. His objective, he tells us, was to “contain chaos”, a chaos which he saw around him, but in Música de acompañamiento por una escena del film (written in Germany between 1929 and 1930), Schoenberg, a Jew, leaves only four words “Menacing danger, Fear, Catastrophe”. His pessimism, a result of the anti-Semitism of which he was a victim until his exile to the United States, summon the perplexity which he expressed to his peers: “Why is an Aryan judged by the standards of Goethe, Schopenhauer and so on? Why don’t people say that Jews are like Mahler, Altenberg, Schoenberg and so many others?” Schoenberg’s struggle is a lonely one and is imbued with the clarity of a man who would have to be proven right by the justice of the future. (Sabrina D. Marques)
THE CHRONICLE OF ANNA MAGDALENA BACH
Saturday, November 12th, 16:00
Medeia Monumental, Room 4
Conversation with Pascal Bonitzer
Few filmmakers have, like Straub-Huillet, made music such a prominent centerpiece of their work. Their third feature film, The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach, 1968) was the realization of one of Jean-Marie Straub’s oldest projects. The rigorous preliminary work would demand ten years of detailed idealization: this (de) construction proposed to use the cinematic medium to face the unique project of “using music neither as an accompaniment nor commentary, but as aesthetic matter”, as the shaping of the narrative and the mise-en-scéne. A dialectical relation between several rhythms substantiates the unique density of a film which, between symphonies and cantatas, still manages to pursue a constant aesthetic purification. “My biggest fear in Bachfilm”, Straub admits “was that the music would create peaks in the film: it should instead stay on the same level as the rest.” (Sabrina D. Marques)
FROM TODAY TO TOMORROW
Sunday, November 13th, 14:00
Medeia Monumental, Room 4
Just like they had done in Bachfilm, while shooting From Today to Tomorrow (Von Heute auf Morgen, 1996) Straub and Huillet defend direct sound unconditionally, seeking to “capture the singing and the singing body simultaneously.” It is thus that they created a body of work directed towards performing the feat of softening the edges of the medium, uniting sound and image (and presenting the manipulative practice of cutting and gluing arbitrarily during editing – a post-production trick that Straub called making “sound soup”). (Sabrina D. Marques)