Quattro Movimenti: A Study on Scelsi, is a cinematic response to Giacinto Scelsi’s chimeric Strings Trio.
Giacinto Scelsi was a composer whose practice involved breaking any possible narrative within music composition. Shot over a single weekend in Iceland, the film fabricates an alternate earth, a place that is pure and elemental, where Nature exists in primal form. The music holds a constant tension that never reaches its climax nor transforms itself.
There is no visual narrative, there is no destination. There are humans and beasts moving in a world which is both their antagonist and their cradle. Time and space are suspended, images are archetypes. Ice, cracked stones, bubbling geysers, lava, black earth, flesh, eyes, scales, hooves, fur... The primal consciousness of being alive, instinctive, violent and pure.
Giacinto Scelsi: String Trio by London Contemporary Orchestra (Galya Bisengalieva, Robert Ames, Max Ruisi) is now available on SA Recordings.