Man with a Movie Camera - Live Silent Film Score, Wende Museum of the Cold War

The premiere of a live wind quintet score by Five Skins co-artistic directors Daniel Goldblum and Dominyka Šeibok. The performance includes avant-garde wind quintet music from Cold War-Hungary by composers György Ligeti and György Kurtág, along with music by Bartok, Shostakovich and free improvisation. The music is paired with Dziga Vertov's landmark cinematic innovation, Man with a Movie Camera (1929, Ukrainian SSR), a singular work often hailed as the greatest documentary of all time.

The film begins with a bold declaration: 

“AN EXPERIMENT IN CINEMATIC COMMUNICATION… towards the creation of an authentically international absolute language of cinema.” 

With a wealth of wit and idealism, he documents life in three Soviet Ukrainian cities - Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odessa - along with the camera man himself, playing with the meta relationships of subject, artist and audience.

Like Vertov, Ligeti and Kurtag lived at the extreme edges of expression, and their work is imbued with the same manic spirit of intense rebellion and irony. By melding the film with synergistic sounds, Five Skins hopes to further Vertov’s vision, mining the past to explore the alchemy of sound and image. 

Press: LA Weekly https://www.laweekly.com/the-body-politic-arts-calendar-march-3-9/

Performers

Dominyka Šeibok - flute, alto flute, piccolo Regina Brady - oboe, english horn Sérgio Coelho - clarinet Elizabeth Linares Montero - french horn Daniel Goldblum - bassoon