David Ryan’s film, Via di San Teodoro 8, explores Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi’s (1905-1988) house in the heart of Rome. It investigates different aspects of this house: its spaces, sounds and vistas, and its unique ambience opposite the ancient Roman Forum. It lies somewhere between experimental documentary and the filmic poetic essay, also portraying the early electronic instruments (Ondiolas) on which Scelsi composed and improvised in a rare performance by pianist Oscar Pizzo. Without any dialogue, the film attempts to capture something of what the Hungarian film theorist Bela Balazs alluded to: the possibility of sound and image combining to articulate, “all that has speech beyond human speech, and speaks to us with the vast conversational powers of life […]”.
History
Refereed
No
Publisher
Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University
File version
Published version
Language
eng
Item sub-type
Video
Legacy posted date
2011-03-22
Legacy creation date
2020-10-13
Legacy Faculty/School/Department
ARCHIVED Faculty of Arts, Law & Social Sciences (until September 2018)