Each year the Ghent International Film Festival organises a film music seminar curated by lecturer Martine Huvenne in co-operation with the IAK. This year the seminar focuses on the way in which music and sound make up the sound band. Speakers are Annabelle Pangborn of the London School of Sound, Mychael Danna (home composer of Atom Egoyan) and Steve Munro (sound designer of Egoyan).

The seminar will not only discuss music, but also deal with sound and the ways the conjunctions between sound and music establish the overall feel of a film. Annabelle Pangborn will illustrate this in an analysis of Egoyan’s Exotica (1994), with music by Mychael Danna and a sound design by Steve Munro.

Mychael Danna, an esteemed guest at previous Flanders Film Festival editions, will be back in Ghent to attend the 2007 World Soundtrack Awards Ceremony, at which a selection of his work will be performed live. Closely associated with the films by Egoyan, his work is somewhat different from the music of the ‘classical’ film composers. His work belongs to the 21st, rather than to the 20th Century, no longer using musical themes to accompany or identify classical narrative structures. But what doés he do then and how does he do it?

Steve Munro, sound designer and winner of numerous Genie Awards (Canada’s national film awards), worked not only for Egoyan, but also for Paul Schrader, Patricia Rozema, Don McKellar and Bruce McDonald. In an interview he pointed out that he often tries to get into the minds of the characters. He also pays a lot of attention to sounds which have little to do with what happens physically on the screen, trying to develop an “ambient signature”. In that sense, he considers the sound designer’s job pretty similar to that of the composer. Both have to work in close dialogue with the filmmaker and with each other.

Armenian born filmmaker Atom Egoyan (°1960) abandoned the linear narrative based on a unity of time and space. Born in Egypt, he moved to Canada with his parents. The multitude of cultural backgrounds, the shifting position of the individual that appears to refer to different times and spaces, the complexity of human relations and the exploration of the boundaries of these relations are the recurrent themes characterizing all his films. No wonder the Flanders Film Festival was among the first to draw attention to this work. The festival’s focus on the interaction between music and film could hardly find better examples of how meaningful and beautiful this interaction can be.

FILM MUSIC SEMINAR
Curated by Martine Huvenne

October 19th, 2007 – 10am - 5pm
Ghent International Film Festival

With
Annabelle Pangborn (UK) – composer & sound designer
Mychael Danna (Canada) – composer
Steve Munro (Canada) – sound designer

A Flanders International Film Festival – Ghent Production
In collaboration with the Initiative for the Audiovisual Arts (IAK)

To subscribe or for more info on the seminar, click here.