A&E

F.I.L.M. brings Alloy Orchestra to perform original score to Dziga Vertov’s film Man With a Movie Camera

By Bridget Braley ’18

This past weekend, the Forum on Image and Language in Motion  (F.I.L.M.) series hosted the Alloy Orchestra, who performed their original score to Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929).

The Alloy Orchestra composes and performs their own scores to a variety of films, oftentimes creating soundtracks for silent films. As a group, they perform internationally and will soon be travelling to Slovenia and Croatia.

The group consists of only three performers who use a variety of creative instruments to create almost any sound imaginable. As Alloy is a live orchestra, they play directly below the screen, so the audience sees how they are creating any given sound throughout the performance.

Yet, the most striking part of their performance is how easy it is to forget about the orchestra. Their music transcends the theater and transports the audience into the film in an incredibly unique manner. Even the crazy clashing sounds that were created to fit the feel of Man with a Movie Camera felt perfectly at home within the context of the film. It was truly impressive to witness the complexity and volume of the noise that three performers could make.

Man with a Movie Camera is, on its own, an incredibly powerful experimental film. It constantly plays with how and what the audience sees, shaping and reshaping their perspectives. Through the inventive nature of the visuals, the film explores the inventive and idealistic nature of the Soviet Union in the late 1920s. In the endless shots of the Soviet industry hard at work, the camera glorifies the mechanization of the work force. The repetition within the shots of automated machines becomes beautiful in its exacting nature.

Additionally, in its nature as an avant-garde film, Man with a Movie Camera explores completely new territory in filmmaking. Its constant use of time lapse, slow motion and double exposures creates a phantasmagoria of visuals that absolutely enchants the viewer. The whole film is constantly in a rush towards the Soviet ideal that the camera is trying to capture.  

Through the combination of the visuals and the Alloy Orchestra’s soundtrack, Man with a Movie Camera became an incredibly immersive film. By transporting the audience outside of all expectations for what a film can be: endless possibilities, twists and turns abound. It was a performance absolutely not to be missed.

Over the course of the semester, the F.I.L.M. series will be bringing in a wide variety of filmmakers to present their work. With the support of the Kirkland Endowment and the Experimental Television re-grant program, Visiting Professor in Art History Scott MacDonald carefully curates an amazing series of films.

The next presentation will be Beth B. with her film Exposed! (2013) that explores a new wave of burlesque performance. She is an important filmmaker from the 1970s and 1980s whose work should not be passed up. See the preview for the event on Page 11.

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