Borderless Sounds: Swiss Documentary
October 7, 8, 9, 14, 15, and 21
- A Tickle in the Heart
- Step across the Border
Das Alphorn - Accordion Tribe
- Signers Koffer
- Namibia Crossings
- Ombres
***All film programs are held in the East Building Auditorium except where noted***
A Tickle in the Heart
October 7 at 4:30 p.m.
October 9 at 2:00 p.m.
The Epstein Brothers of Brooklyn were kings of klezmer who supplied their celebrated sounds to weddings and other festivities around Manhattan for over sixty years. Now living in a sun-drenched south Florida retirement village, the Epsteins are still without rival in the world of traditional klezmer — the rousing Jewish folk sound with deep Eastern European roots. "We play it just the way we would tell a story." (Stefan Schwietert, 1996, 35 mm, 87 mins.)
Calendar of Events | Borderless Sounds list
Step across the Border
October 8 at 4:30 p.m.
"Few films capture the thrill of improvised music as well as this award-winning survey of the travels and travails of the musician/composer Fred Frith. A former member of the British group Henry Cow and frequent collaborator with New York noise-movement artists John Zorn, Arto Lindsay, and Bill Laswell, Frith has made a career out of testing and breaching the boundaries of 'accepted' sounds and composition. Boasting cameos by Robert Frank, Jonas Mekas, and John Zorn, among others, the film was chosen by Cahiers du cinéma in 2000 as one of the 'hundred most important movies in film history.'" — Jason Sanders (Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel, 1990, 35 mm, 90 mins.)
also
Das Alphorn
Das Alphorn focuses on the sublime qualities of a traditional instrument that is too often dismissed musically as a simple symbol for Alpine tourism. The exotic alphorn has broad melodic potential, as the film amply demonstrates in a musical path from folk harmonies to a modern sound collage. (Stefan Schwietert, 2003, digital beta, German with subtitles, 76 mins.)
Calendar of Events | Borderless Sounds list
Accordion Tribe
October 14 at 2:30 p.m.
Five squeezebox superstars — New York avant-gardist Guy Klucevsek (who plays with John Zorn and Laurie Anderson); Slovenian punk rocker Bratko Bibic; classically influenced Maria Kalaniemi from Finland; blind and self-taught Otto Lechner from Germany; and rhapsodic Swede Lars Hollmer from — formed the ensemble Accordion Tribe to reinstate their underdog instrument to world-class standing. Traveling across Europe on a concert tour, Accordion Tribe is a musical homage to this proud but beleaguered instrument. (Stefan Schwietert, 2004, 35 mm, English and German with subtitles, 87 mins.)
Calendar of Events | Borderless Sounds list
Signers Koffer
October 14 at 4:30 p.m.
Artist Roman Signer's installations and "event sculptures" are unique artistic experiments with a musical afterlife, often in the form of a soundtrack that might include a harmonic clamor of collisions, eruptions, or even objects flying through space. From the Alps to Iceland, Stromboli, and finally, eastern Poland, filmmaker Peter Liechti follows Signer as he journeys with his own highly personal set of instruments to produce his sculptural chamber music. (Peter Liechti, 1996, 35 mm, German with subtitles, 90 mins.)
Calendar of Events | Borderless Sounds list
Namibia Crossings
October 15 at 4:30 p.m.
Namibia Crossings goes on the road with the Hambana Sound Company — twelve musicians from Namibia, Zimbabwe, Angola, Siberia, and Switzerland, whose diverse backgrounds in opera, jazz, pop, traditional, and classical make for a heady mix. Visiting remote African villages, the film samples local sounds, crosses incredible landscapes, and caps off with an appearance at Namibia's national theater in Windhoek. (Peter Liechti, 2004, 35 mm, German with subtitles, 90 mins.)
Calendar of Events | Borderless Sounds list
Ombres
October 21 at 12:30 p.m.
"Classical music and outsider art merge in this behind-the-scenes portrait of Swiss composer Heinz Holliger's two-year endeavor to compose a musical homage to 1920s painter and musician Louis Soutter. A violin soloist in the Geneva Orchestra, Soutter was kicked out for 'playing to his celestial voices' and later committed to a sanitarium (a favored destination for Swiss rebel geniuses, the film ruefully points out). Soutter turned his attention to art and created over 4,000 intricately claustrophobic paintings in the twenty years before he died. Heinz Holliger views his own music as a way 'to decipher what those on the brink of despair have to tell us.'" — Jason Sanders (Edna Politi, 1997, 35 mm, French and German with subtitles, 104 mins.)
Calendar of Events | Borderless Sounds list
Film Programs | Film Series | Art Films and Events | Children's Films