Duration: 4'00"
35mm (1:1.85) Dolby SR (also available in HD (High Definition))
NSW FTO Young Filmmakers' Fund. Credits below.
SBS Television: Sat 02 March 2013 at 3:50pm, Sat 27 June 2009 at 12.55pm, Sat 18 Oct 2008 12:55pm, Sat 29 Dec 2007 4:25pm & Sat 24 Jun 2006 3:25pm, etc. Plus numerous festival screenings (see below).
We track in and then around what appears to be Man Ray’s classic surrealist image featuring his muse Kiki. Beautiful shapes and silhouettes - including an ancient Greek gymnopédiste - dance serenely in the background. For just a moment before metamorphosis, our violoncelle comes to life to sing us a poem set to Satie’s haunting Gymnopédie No.1. “ Le Violoncelle” is a single-shot micro-voyage into the creative milieux of Man Ray, Erik Satie & Kiki de Montparnasse, and from the beginnings of photographic manipulation to the present era of digital duplicity.
Based on Man Ray's surrealist image Le Violon d'Ingres.
(Premièred at the Art Gallery of NSW and Parliament of NSW, 31 March - 4 April 2004 with films by Polanski and Pabst.)
In official competition, Montréal World Film Festival, September 2004. Screening in St.Tropez at the 2004 International Festival of Antipodean Cinema, October 2004, Flickerfest January 2005,London Australian Film Festival March 2005, Paris Film Festival April 2005, St.Kilda Film FestivalMay 2005, Sydney, Jackson Hole & Arcipelago (Rome) Film Festivals June 2005)).
Licensed to SBS Television Australia until 1 Jan 2070 (!) as a filler!
(the above stills may only be used for publicity purposes - all images © 2004)
Download the PRESS KIT (PDF, 620kb)
General Enquiries E-MAIL Adam Sebire
Australian Broadcaster: Special Broadcasting Service (SBS)
International Distribution: www.flickerfest.com.au
Festival Screenings:
October 2008 (Canada) :
March 2006 (Cyprus) :
September 2005 (Vladivostok) :
June 2005 (Sydney) :
June 2005 (Wyoming, USA) :
June 2005 (Rome) :
May 2005 (St.Kilda, Melbourne) :
April 2005 (Paris Film Festival) :
March 2005 (London) :
January 2005 (Sydney):
October 2004 (St.Tropez):
Sept/Oct 2004 (Montréal):
August 2004 (Thailand):
31 March 2004 Première (Sydney):
A New South Wales Film and Television Office
Young Filmmakers' Fund Film
CAST
Kiki de Montparnasse: JADE ALEXANDER
Dancer/Choreographer: NELSON REGUERA PEREZ
Double Bassist: JESSICA HOLMES
Harpist: LEIGHA DARKE
Principal Starfish: JANE CAVANAGH
Serpent player: IAIN HOY
Contamine de Latour’s poem “Les Antiques”
set to Satie’s “Gymnopédie” and performed by
NADIA PIAVE
with the
SBS RADIO & TELEVISION YOUTH ORCHESTRA
CREW
Production Designer & Costume Designer: VAN JONES
Costume Supervisor: CHRIS HODDER
Art Director: BINH TRUONG
Design Assistant: JOSEPH JERMEY
Make-up Artiste: KERRIN JACKSON
Make-up & Hair Assistant: JULIE SNEDDON
Calligraphic Artist: JOHANNA van KAMPEN
Cinematographer: CORDELIA BERESFORD
Camera Assistant: BONNIE ELLIOTT
Gaffer: PETER WOOD
Grips: PIP SHAPERA & JITH SEN
Rigger: JOHN ST.QUINTIN
LipSync Supervisor: JANE CAVANAGH
Rehearsal Assistant: ELNAZ BAHRAMI
Stills/Playback Operator: ROLAND WILHELM
Violoncello lent by JOHANNA FLUHRER
POST-PRODUCTION
Digital Designer: VERENA THOMAS
HD Editing Facility: BEYOND INTERNATIONAL (logo?)
35mm Kine: TIM TRUMBLE (Dreamlight)
Facilities Liaison: AMY LUCAS (Frame, Set & Match)
HD-D5 transfers: PHIL STUART-JONES
Telecine/Colourist: SCOTT MACLEAN
Morph & Additional Compositing: Adam Sebire
Orchestral Multitrack Recording:
GREG SIMMONS & JACKSON LUKE BAKER (JMC Academy)
Liz Latimer • Glenn Santry • Jimmy Soegiarto
Oscar Nacho Salinas • Adrian Riddell
Pre-Mix Engineer: JIMMY SOEGIARTO
Re-Recording Mixer: TONY VACCHER (Audio Loc Sound Design)
Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No.1
orchestrated by Claude Debussy
(clearances: Boosey & Hawkes Australia)
Recorded at the Sydney Town Hall by
The SBS Radio & Television Youth Orchestra
(Principal Sponsor: EPSON)
Conductor: Matthew Krel
Violoncello solo: LEAH JENNINGS
French Horn solo: MARNIE SÈBIRE
MANY THANKS TO:-
Nadia Piave • Lyn Jones • Heath Jones • Jenny & Phil Foley
Ruth Read • Dung Truong • Kerry Easton • Su Goldfish
Nalina Wait • Paul Cordeiro • Justine Seymour • Sarah Keogh
John D Johnston • Coline Jubert • Carolyn Johnson
Needeya Islam (NSWFTO) • Lisa Olesen (AFTRS) • Robert Herbert (Art Gallery of NSW)
Jay, Noel, Pat, Eleanor, Ruth and the NSW Machine Knitters’ Association Inc.
John, Wayne, Annie and the Construction Dept at AFTRS
Gwen and Architectural & Antique Elements, Leichhardt
Gerard Schultz and Flame Free International • Maxine Millard and Rose & Heather, Willoughby
Musicians and management of the SBS Radio & Television Youth Orchestra
AudioLoc • Beyond International • Dreamlight Imaging
Frame, Set & Match • FujiFilm • JMC Academy • Lemac • Neglab
Producer: FIORENZA ZITO
Conceived & Directed by ADAM SÈBIRE
© 2004
Director’s Statement
Man Ray’s stunning image, Le Violon d’Ingres (1924, above right) is one of the great images of surrealism, sensuality and indeed photography, and one that always spoke to me in many ways, as a musician. Beyond the obvious parallelisms of cello and human - physique, vocal range, the way a cello’s body is held so intimately against the player’s, and the terminology of “the neck”, “fingerboard”, “belly” and “ribs” - there is Man Ray’s magical transposition of a cello’s f-holes - designed help the instrument resonate and let the vibrating air escape - onto the model’s torso.
But I had always wondered what else we might discover if we could step inside the photographic moment; what sort of surrealist world we would find; what it was hiding beyond the frame’s cropped edges?
Then, whilst listening to a recital by Sydney singer Nadia Piave a couple of years ago, my astonished ears heard music that I realised had (for me) always lain dormant in this image. Nadia had located a poem by Contamine de Latour (1867-1926), a friend so close to composer Erik Satie that at one point they had shared the same suit! Taken by its own surreal and impressionistic qualities, she had set this poem to Satie’s mesmerising Gymnopédie No.1.
For this project, we take this fusion one step further and record her singing to Debussy’s impressionistic orchestration of Satie’s piece, imbued with a Parisian fin-de-siècle sensuality and melancholy. In our one-shot film, we explore beyond the frame of this two-dimensional photographic moment, in both time and space, venturing into the half-waking, half-dreaming world of Man Ray’s studio, as well as the artistic milieu of those times.
Man Ray has weathered much criticism for turning his model, Kiki de Montparnasse, into an object of desire, an object to be manipulated. In our film, not only does Kiki revivify and regain her lost third dimension, but she focuses her desire on the gymnopédist, then gazes directly and intensely at the audience, singing us a poem whilst metamorphosing into her cellistic “other”.
Man Ray seems to be teasing the presumption of photography’s ability to give us privileged access to “the Real” from a Surrealist perspective. In the twenty-first century, with digital manipulation now pervasive and undetectable, the question becomes: can we now (or could we ever) trust any photographic image?
And so our transformation takes Man Ray’s playful allusion to its (il)logical conclusion. We begin in a analogue world where the mimetic innocence of photography is just starting to be teased and end up in a digital world of pixels, luma-keys and morphs, where cameras leave no “negative trails” behind them, and where the relationship of the photograph to reality is finally peripheral. Kiki has ‘progressed’ from analogue to digital, from a bimorphic photographic still to an 'animated' digital composite.
Our film is an affectionate homage to the art of the period, and a twenty-first century experimentation with it. We hope that for four minutes our audience might enter the surrealistic head-space of bohemian Paris in the 1920s, the Paris of Satie, Man Ray, Kiki and Latour. A space where still photographs come alive to sing, where sensuous music complements the play of light and shadow on film, and where a body’s flesh and a cello’s wood merge in a moment of magical transformation. – A.S. 2004
Quotes
“For me there is no difference between dream and reality. I never know if what I’m doing is done when I’m dreaming or when I’m awake.” — Man Ray
“Erik Satie’s work is as miniature as a keyhole, but as soon as your eye or ear gets closer to it, everything changes.” — Jean Cocteau
“I would rather photograph an idea than an object, and a dream rather than an idea.” — Man Ray