PennSound has been very happy to host work by filmmaker Henry Hills for many years now, and today weve added Little Lieutenant. the 1994 collaboration between Hills and choreographer Sally Silvers, with music by John Zorn, To watch this film, and many more Hills works spanning thirty years, visit PennSounds Henry Hills author page: writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Hills.html Heres Hills summary of the film: Little Lieutenant is a look back at the late Weimar era with its struggles and celebrations leading up to world war, a period piece. Scored to John Zorns arrangement of the Kurt Weill song, Little Lieutenant of the Loving God, and drawing its imagery both from the original song and its somewhat idiosyncratic rearrangement, the film presents an internal reading of Silvers solo scored to the same musical piece, Along the Skid Mark of Recorded History. Closely following the Zorn arrangement, the film was storyboarded in 30 scenes (the arrangement changes approximately every 4 measures) and principally shot in a small studio employing rear screen projection, with foreground movement choreographed to interact with the projected imagery which reflects themes apparent in the song and its arrangement (Weimar cabaret scenes, labor footage, empty industrial landscapes, water, slides of moody photographs by James Casebere, a kinescope of Silvers performance of the solo at the Joyce Theatre, battle newsreels, Walther Ruttmanns film Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, and a restructured animation, The Youth Machine). Scenes range through a Citizen Kane-esque pan up a forboding structure, idyllic lovers in both pastoral and industrial settings, labor marches, a lonely walk down a deserted alley, a bar brawl, a Motown-ish girl group, a dream sequence, and a giddy animation, up to the terrors of war and a bittersweet conclusion: an elaborate music video.
Posted on: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 15:09:12 +0000
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