ELECTRIC MUSES with live music by Aurora Engine and Bell Lungs
Cinetopia in collaborating with The Debutante brings a women-led evening of surrealist films and technologically-enhanced live music performed by Aurora Engine and Bell Lungs!
About ELECTRIC MUSES with live music by Aurora Engine and Bell Lungs
A women-led evening of surrealist films and technologically-enhanced live music performed by Aurora Engine and Bell Lungs
Edinburgh-based Cinetopia is collaborating with The Debutante (a feminist-surrealist magazine), and musician-composers Aurora Engine (Deborah Shaw), and Bell Lungs (Ceylan Hay) to bring audiences ELECTRIC MUSES: a women-led evening of surrealist film and creative, technologically enhanced live music. This unique event will tour three venues through July, Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh. On July 9th, Electric Muses programme will be at the Old Royal High School Great Debate Hall as part of Pianodrome's Summer Resonancy.
ELECTRIC MUSES celebrates women working in creative technology spanning across two centuries, bringing their overlooked input into the public eye.
Since the birth of cinema, women filmmakers have used this “electric” art form to tell their stories. With ELECTRIC MUSES we will merge cinema and live, technologically enhanced music to highlight the profound contributions women have made in creative technology art forms.
Cinetopia is showcasing four surrealist films made by pioneering female filmmakers over the 20th century alongside the compositions of two contemporary Scotland-based composers, both of whom use technology heavily as part of their process and performances, Aurora Engine and Bell Lungs.
The main feature will be ‘The Seashell and the Clergyman’ (1928) by Germaine Dulac, a female surrealist filmmaker and director active during the 1920’s. This will be accompanied by a live soundtrack composed and performed by Aurora Engine and Bell Lungs.
In addition, audiences will experience a newly commissioned score of Maya Deren’s experimental short, 'Meshes of the Afternoon' (1943) composed and performed by the same musical team. Two additional short films will be screened curated by The Debutante.
The curatorial team will introduce audiences to the programme, and to the contributions these female surrealist filmmakers made to the movement and to the history of filmmaking.
A Q&A will also follow between the curators and musicians about the work of the various filmmakers and the process of scoring music. A short intermission will occur in the middle of the programme.
Film titles as part of this screening of Electric Muses:
Short films – screened with original sounds
You Be Mother ( Sarah Pucill) - 1990 - 7 min
Psychosynthesis (Barbara Hammer) 1975 - 6 min
Short films – performed with Live Music
Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren; Alexander Hammid) 1943 - 14 minutes
The Seashell and the Clergyman (Germaine Dulac) 1928 - 41 minutes
About the musicians:
Aurora Engine is a composer, musician and sonic artist living and working in Leith. Within her practise she creates compositions and soundscapes blending the acoustic textures of real instruments (piano, harps, wind instruments and percussion) manipulating their sounds using creative software and effects pedals. She also writes and performs her own songs on harp or piano. www.auroraengine.com
Bell Lungs is a Scottish musician and composer her work forging richly textured live sets which draw on free improvisation, ambient, avant dream pop, drone, noise and folk traditions, the musical landscape of Scottish raconteur Bell Lungs is often cinematic in scope, featuring electric violin, guitar, omnichord and a range of wild and wonderful noise toys, all wrapped around mesmerically shifting vocals. www.bell.lungs.com
This screening of ELECTRIC MUSES is part of Film Feels Curious, a UK-wide cinema season, supported by the National Lottery and BFI Film Audience Network. Explore all films and events at filmfeels.co.uk.
We strive to be as accessible as possible with wheelchair access and wheelchair accessible portable toilets on site at the Old Royal High School. If you have any added accessibility needs or questions, please get in touch at info@cinetopia.uk.
There is also a cash bar onsite at the Old Royal High by Bellfield Brewery.
How to find us:
You'll find the access to the entrance to the Pianodrome resonancy and the Great Debate Hall from the roundabout on Regents Road. Follow the pathway there to the back of the building and, and there will be an entrance to the event.
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