On September 23rd at BIT in Rotterdam, RE:VIVE, Nous’klaer and Roffa Mon Amour team up to showcase 6 archival films re-scored by top Dutch electronic music talent. Tickets and more info available here.
A growing cast of electronic and experimental musicians are redefining contemporary film and television music. From Mica Levi to Oneohtrix Point Never, Anna Meredith to Ben Frost, directors are looking wider and weirder to find new musical voices for their films. In an effort to provide opportunities for the wild talent pool of producers in the Dutch electronic music scene, RE:VIVE, an initiative by The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and Nous’klaer partnered to commission artists across all genres to compose new music for archival films from the Sound & Vision collection. The resulting 6 commissions will now all be shown together for the first time in collaboration with the like-minded film initiative Roffa Mon Amour.
Thessa Torsing (upsammy) and Sjoerd Martens are now a dynamic A/V duo, but their first commission, Zeekasteel for Museumnacht Amsterdam 2018 is a nostalgic wash of melancholic saxophones and recut films about the making of the doomed ship, the MS Oranje. Tammo Hesselink’s percussive accompaniment (first commissioned by RE:VIVE, The Rest is Noise and Eye Filmmuseum) for the renowned dadist film Ballet Mécanique illustrates the DJ/Producer’s uncanny knack for driving rhythms, patience and pacing. Mattheis and Ranie Ribeiro split the 1977 film Het Jaar Rond (Jan van Keulen). Mattheis offering a piano laden meditation on polder life and his upbringing in Goeree Overflakkee, South-Holland. Ranie Ribeiro displays his talents as a harpist for the first time, grounding Het Jaar Rond in the present in lieu of reminiscing. Kems Kriol, a true Rotterdammer accompanies the amateur documentary collage film Rotterdam in de Jaren 90s, a dark period of strife, economic and social crisis for the now booming metropolis, with the compassion and empathy of someone who experienced those years first-hand but with enough time removed to reflect with heart. Lora Deniz angularly and precisely moves her way through the delicate Tegenlicht, a surprisingly colorful and fluid educational film about painting, a bold juxtaposition that propels the film into the 2020s.
All together, the night’s films and music show the boundless breadth of talent within the Dutch electronic music scene, a calling-card for filmmakers in NL reminding them to look beyond the typical stables of talent.