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OtherFilm > Screening Programs > Scratch Musics
SCRATCH MUSICS
OtherFilm Scratch Musics Screening at SLQ
Wednesday 19th March
Brisbane, Australia, State Library of Queensland
Auditorium 2 6.30pm sharp FREE!
http://www.otherfilm.org//">www.otherfilm.org
3 films
Pilgrimage From Scattered Points – A film by Luke Fowler (45mins, UK, 2007)
In his latest documentary film piece, Fowler outlines the history of The Scratch Orchestra, composer Cornelius Cardew’s free-thinking grouping of musicians, non-musicians and other interested parties.
Using archive footage - much of it culled from Hanne Boenisch’s 1971 television film Journey To The North Pole - alongside interviews, rostrum shots of ephemera and Super-8 vignettes, Pilgrimage From Scattered Points is at once a coherent narrative essay on the Orchestra’s history, and a fluid portrait in film of Cardew and his confreres. Divided into seven sections, the film runs from the group’s formation in 1969 to its rancorous split in the mid-1970s, by which time tensions between two factions, fostered by divisive debates on the function of art - a Maoist tendency who argued for making music to serve the people and a ‘bourgeoisie idealist’ camp devoted to formal experiment - had risen to boiling point. Along the way, we learn that the Scratch Orchestra - defined in their ‘Draft Manifesto’ as ‘a large number of enthusiasts pooling their resources (not primarily material resources) and assembling for action (music-making, performances, edification)’ - improvised from visual scores, including in one case a dog-eared copy of the Radio Times, and took a revolutionary approach to music making in more ways than one….
text by Jack Mottram - http://jackmottram.com/">http://jackmottram.com/
MFMS - A film by Stephen Jones (23minutes, Australia, 2008) "The Machine for Making Sense performed at the Opera House in late 1994 and I was invited to record the performance, so with another camera operator and myself we shot the entire performance. Jim Denley then cut Julian Knowles’ sound recording down to a twenty minute version and I began what turned out to be a very long process of building a visual analogue of the musical performance….. After thirteen years and several attempts to push it along I finally finished early 2008.
…a visual performance, a music video, twenty three minutes long and almost symphonic in it's structure. It is not about the band as stars but about their musical improvisation and interaction, reflected in the feel of each section, the toning of colour, the pacing of the motion, patterns of light, gesture, almost a dance, the people in the street obscured by the effects though perhaps it's been so long they would not recognize themselves anyway. Each section of music has its own mood from the quiet and still to the exultant, the performances of the musicians reflected in the style and intensity of the visual."
"Silence is therefore the only possible means of communication". K. Marx
Chris Mann - voice and text
Amanda Stewart - voice and text
Rik Rue - digital and analog tape manipulations
Jim Denley - wind instruments
Stevie Wishart - hurdy gurdy, violin, voice and electronics
Recording from the desk by Julian Knowles
Jim Denley will be in attendance to introduce the film.
Drum/Sing a film by Gregor Nicholas (22 min. NZ, 1985)
A collaboration between Nicholas and the performance music group ‘From Scratch’ founded by Scratch Orchestra member Phil Dadson.
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