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DVD from Mode
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$35 Personal Use
$95 Academic/Institutional Use
Price Explanation
THE FIRST COMMERCIAL RELEASE OF CAGE'S ONLY MAJOR FILM.
One11 (1992) a film without subject by John Cage, produced and directed by Henning Lohner
103 (1991) for large orchestra
the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln or Spoleto Festival Orchestra
Arturo Tamayo and John Kennedy, directors
One11 and 103' is very strong, very daring, and finally completely mesmerizing."
--- Louis Malle, Los Angeles, 21 October 1992
John Cage created his only feature-length film in the year he died. A sublime performance for camera person and light, One11 is a film without subject, in black and white. There is light but no persons, no things, no ideas about repetition and variation. The final impression is of another, timeless place - freely roaming the clouds or, perhaps, under the sea. Chance operations were used with respect to the lighting, camera shots and the editing of the film. The light environment was designed and programmed by John Cage and Andrew Culver. The orchestral work 103 musically accompanies One11. Like the film, 103 is 90-minutes long, divided into seventeen parts - its density varies from solos, duos, trios to full orchestral tuttis.
Cage started to address the perception of emptiness and at the same time the random quality of what happens in a prescribed space as early as 1952 in his piece 4:33, which consisted entirely of silence. Forty years later he said: "Of course the film will be about the effect of light in an empty space. But no space is actually empty and the light will show what is in it. And all this space and all this light will be controlled by random operations."
This simple concept was implemented professionally and with a great deal of technical input in a Munich television studio under the direction of Henning Lohner.
The film One11 and the musical piece ("soundtrack") 103 are of the same duration and run in parallel, without relating directly to each other, but each has 17 parts. Each of the parts is based on approx. 1200 random operations devised by a computer and determining how the lighting is controlled and the movements of a crane-mounted camera.
The result, aided by the distinguished cameraman Van Theodore Carlson, is a film entirely without plot or actors, which Cage hopes will enable viewers to find themselves.
Two distinct soundtracks are offered of 103 for large orchestra to accompany the film: one taken from the premiere of the piece by the prestigious WDR Symphony Orchestra of the German Radio in Cologne, the other by the Spoleto Festival Orchestra.
This release marks the first in a series of Henning Lohner's films to be released on Mode Records, including additional films on Cage.
ADDITIONAL FEATURES:
Choice of two orchestral soundtracks performed by the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln and The Spoleto Festival Orchestra.
The Making of One11: a 43-minute documentary on the creative process and realization of the film made for television by Henning Lohner at that time - with new narration by Joan La Barbara.
Interview with Van Carlson & Henning Lohner discussing their work with Cage and the film, the technical challenges, and more. Filmed for this DVD in 2006. (33 minutes).
Reviews:
John Cage
One11 with 103
Mode 174 (DVD)
In 1992, John Cage declined several invitations to attend celebrations marking his 80th birthday in order to devote himself to the completion of One11, the eleventh work for solo performer (hence the title) in the series of Number Pieces that occupied him during the five last years of his life. The performer in this case was a solo cameraman - Van Carlson - and Cage's ambitious project was nothing less than a full-length film (90 minutes) with no characters and no plot, directed by Henning Lohner and accompanied (or not as the case may be) by the orchestral work 103, which dates from September 1991. It's quite simply one of Cage's great works, and one of the most complex and time-consuming to realise, though as usual the basic idea was remarkably simple: use I-Ching generated chance procedures to determine the placement, angle of projection and intensity of 168 lights in an empty television studio and provide the solo cameraman with a similarly calculated score defining camera movements (a similar chance-generated working plan was subsequently devised for the editing of the film that took place in New York after the film had been shot in Germany in April 1992). The film consists of 17 scenes, each of which is further divided into takes, and Cage's idea was to dispense with editing as far as possible; amazingly only 600m of film were not used, and were duly pillaged to provide the visual backdrop to the opening credits. Andrew Culver programmed the composer's calculations into a computer which controlled the lighting changes - some 1200 of them, each featuring up to twenty different lights - and the full resources of the studio in Fernseh Studio Munchen were put at Cage's disposal.
Shot entirely in 35mm black and white, One11 consists of predominantly slow pans across the blank wall of the studio, illuminated by soft oval patches of light of varying intensity that drift across the screen like clouds. It's a remarkably beautiful experience in conjunction with the rich sustained chords and occasional spiky twangs of 103, two versions of which are included on the disc as alternative soundtracks, one performed by the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln conducted by Arturo Tamayo, the other by the Spoleto Festival Orchestra conducted by John Kennedy. The disc also includes two documentaries on the creation of the film, including insightful explanations by the people involved and some choice quotations from Cage himself. When asked why he'd finally decided to venture into film, he answers: "if I get an opportunity to do something, I jump at it instead of hesitating. Because there isn't much time left." And, later: "In this day of violence, overpopulation, war and economic collapse, it gives us something to enjoy." It does indeed.
--- Dan Warburton, ParisTransatlantic Review, January 2007
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