Step across the border

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Movie
Original title Step across the border
Country of production Germany , Switzerland
original language English (with German subtitles)
Publishing year 1990
length 90 minutes
Rod
Director Nicolas Humbert , Werner Penzel
script Nicolas Humbert, Werner Penzel
production Res Balzli
music Fred Frith , Joey Baron , Ciro Battista , Iva Bittová , Tom Cora , Jean Derome , Pavel Fajt , Eitetsu Hayashi , Tim Hodkinson , Arto Lindsay , René Lussier , Haco , Kevin Norton , Bob Ostertag , Zeena Parkins , Lawrence Wright , John Zorn and Further
camera Oscar Salgado
cut Gisela Castronari , Vera Burnus, Nicolas Humbert, Werner Penzel
occupation

Step Across the Border is an experimental documentary by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel from 1990 about the music of the British multi-instrumentalist , improviser and composer Fred Frith .

action

The film accompanies the musician Fred Frith over two years on his travels and stays in Tokyo , Osaka , Kyoto (Japan), Verona (Italy), St. Remy de Provence (France), Leipzig (Germany), London and the county of Yorkshire ( United Kingdom), New York City (USA), Zurich and Bern (Switzerland). It documents the creation of Frith's improvisational music, spontaneously in everyday life, at rehearsals and concerts, alone or with friends and numerous fellow musicians. There are short interviews with Frith and companions.

production

The film was shot on location in Japan, Italy, France, Great Britain, Germany and the USA on 35 mm black and white film from 1987 to 1990 . It was produced by the German CineNomad film production by Humbert and Wenzel and the Swiss Balzli & Cie of the producer Res Balzli.

The premiere took place on January 14, 1990 at the 25th Solothurn Film Festival , followed by the presentation in the Forum of Young Films at the 40th Berlinale on February 11, as well as numerous other festival participations. The film started in 1990 in many European countries as well as in Canada, 1991 in Japan and 1992 in the USA.

The film was released on VHS video in 1991 and on DVD in 2003 . Fred Frith released the soundtrack of the same name in 1990.

Conception

The film takes an experimental approach to approach its subject. In fact, you only learn a little bit about Fred Frith, his life and his conception of music in short interviews; the other protagonists, some of whom are well-known, - musicians and interviewees - are not presented in the film, and places and music are not named. There is no comprehensible sequence of actions that would follow a travel route or a recognizable chronology. Instead, the film builds on an associative montage of images that shows Frith as part of a global network of like-minded people and friends who, in their often improvised music, share his openness to foreign musical influences and often also extra-musical sounds and noises.

Humbert and Wenzel call their film in the subtitle " Celluloid Improvisation", they describe their working method as follows:

“In Step Across the Border , two forms of artistic expression, improvised music and direct cinema , are combined. In both forms, the moment counts, the intuitive feeling for what is happening in the room. Music and film arise from an intensive perception of the moment, not from the implementation of a given plan. In improvisation, the plan is only revealed at the end. You can find him. "

The film team sees itself as a (visual) " band " that reacts to the musical improvisations and develops spontaneous picture ideas. From this, associative spaces for the music are created in the assembly , which are held together by the sound. The relationship between image and sound is fluid: the sound of the musical performances shown often begins as an independent film sound over the framing images before it becomes the concrete sound of the musical action shown; conversely, the sounds of the picture plane are also interwoven with the music.

Reviews

"In a sophisticated image-sound network, the form principle of which is based on the musical work of Frith, travel images, conversations, concert recordings and other optical 'found objects' are combined to form a collage that is appropriate to the music."

- Lexicon of international film

" Few films capture the intensity and thrill of improvised music as well as this award-winning 1990 documentary on the travels and travails of the musician / composer (and Bay Area resident) Fred Frith. […] Directors Humbert and Penzel match Frith's impromptu, anything-can-be-art approach with an aesthetic that cherishes the unplanned and the anarchic over concrete narrative. "

- Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive

" It is not just the story of an individual, but also an attempt to convey the character of an international musical community, of intertwined creative lives, and its sense of community is part of what makes the film inspiring - the sense that an artist's total rejection of the rules of the market place hardly dooms him to the life a "lonely genius", but rather puts him at the center of another, more interesting world. "

- Chris Gehman, Millenium Film Journal

Awards

Web links

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Individual evidence

  1. ^ Step Across the Border. Info sheet of the 20th International Forum of Young Films , Berlin 1990 (PDF).
  2. ↑ Release info of the film in the IMDb (English).
  3. ↑ Step Across the Border at Discogs .
  4. ↑ Soundtrack for Step Across the Border on Discogs . The album can be listened to in Frith's Bandcamp account .
  5. ^ Website of the film at the production company CineNomad, accessed on January 5, 2019 (translation from English).
  6. ↑ On the use of the sound cf. Guido Heldt: Music and Levels of Narration in Film. Intellect, Bristol 2013, pp. 58, 106-07, doi : 10.26530 / oapen_625671 .
  7. ^ Step Across the Border. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed January 5, 2019 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  8. ^ Step Across the Border. Screening Notes, July 5, 2006. Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, accessed January 5, 2019.
  9. ↑ Chris Gehman: Stateless. In: Millenium Film Journal. No. 30/31 (autumn 1997).