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InstallationFR01FR02Closing:
Awards and Encores
April
9, Thursday, 19.30, Rodina, Main Hall
Program R1: Choreography
in Silent Cinema with Dziga Vertov and Alloy Orchestra (live),
USA
A
Man with a Movie Camera (68 min, 1929, USSR)
dir. Dziga Vertov
“A
Man with a Movie Camera” is an exposé of cinematic
inventions – fast, slow and backward motion, double exposure,
freeze frames, jump cuts, split screens, Dutch angles, animation
artfully choreographed to present life in Odessa and other Soviet
cities in the early 1920s without almost a single word.
Often
cited as Alloy's best score, "A Man with a Movie Camera"
score was written by Alloy with the assistance of film Vertov's
own composer notes and with the help of film scholars, Yuri
Tsavian and Paolo Cherchi Usai in 1995 and toured extensively.
For a decade, Alloy has been unable to perform their score
because of the unavailability of the print. The group has
recently acquired a gorgeous new print of the film from Gosfilmofond
(the Moscow Film Archive). The St. Petersburg concert is a
revival performance – the very first one in 10 years.
April
10, Friday, 21.00, Rodina, Main Hall
Program R2: Choreography in Silent
Cinema with Bastor Keaton and Alloy Orchestra (live), USA
The
General (79 min, 1927, USA)
dir. Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman
“The
General” is a true masterpiece – an example of
an artful narrative structure and technical perfection. The
film is full of playful comic inventiveness and realistic
romance as well as gracefulness and fluid athleticism of Mr.
Keaton notorious for his “great stone face”. Realistic
stunts (without stuntmen to double for Keaton), intricate
free flowing set-pieces, non-stop motion, and a preoccupation
with authenticity make parts of the film a visual history
of the American Civil War.
Alloy
Orchestra
is a world-famous three man musical ensemble (Ken Winokur, Terry
Donahue and Roger Miller), writing and performing live accompaniment
to classic silent films. KINODANCE is their first appearance in
Russia.
Performing
at prestigious film festivals and cultural centers in the US and
abroad (The Telluride Film Festival, The Louvre, Lincoln Center,
The Academy of Motion Pictures, the National Gallery of Art and
others), Alloy has helped revive some of the great masterpieces
of the silent era.
An unusual
combination of found percussion and state-of-the-art electronics
gives the Orchestra the ability to create any sound imaginable.
Utilizing their famous "rack of junk" and electronic
synthesizers, the group generates their scores in a spectacular
variety of styles. They can conjure up a French symphony or a
simple German bar band of the 20's. The group can make the audience
think it is being attacked by tigers, contacted by radio signals
from Mars or swept up in the Russian Revolution.
Alloy collaborates
with some of the world’s best archives and collectors (such
as the George Eastman House, The British Film Institute, Paramount
pictures, Film Preservation Associates and The Douris Corporation)
to present audiences with the very best available prints of some
of history's greatest film.
The members of the group include: TERRY DONAHUE (junk, accordion,
musical saw, vocals), KEN WINOKUR (director, junk percussion and
clarinet), ROGER MILLER (keyboards)
The group
has written scores for 27 feature length films.
Curator’s
note: Alloy Orchestra’s residency responds to one of
the KINODANCE’s aspirations – to define contemporary
dance film in the context of cinema history. By hosting Alloy
Orchestra, KINODANCE will expose and highlight the relationships
between dance film and silent cinema as we strongly believe that
understanding silent cinema is crucial to understanding choreography
for the camera. Similarly to dance film, silent film uses choreography
of the mis-en-scene and actors’ physical action (movement
and gesture) to realize the director’s idea. In some of
the best dance films, the filmmaker and choreographer are often
the same person. Coincidently, filmmakers of early cinema such
as Chaplin and Keaton both directed and performed in their own
films. By bringing Alloy Orchestra, KINODANCE will allow the Russian
artists and audiences to bridge between dance film and silent
cinema as well as to re-discover "A Man with a Movie Camera,"
a masterpiece of montage choreography created by their compatriot.
