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68

Films For The Earth

A retrospective of music documentaries by Frank Scheffer

Free admission
book
Sala Pegasus
from
Friday
27
June
2025
at
18:00
from
2025
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to
Sunday
13
July
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15:00
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2025
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from
2025
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2025
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from 27 June to 13 July 2025
Cinema

Films For The Earth

Synopsis

The way I would put it is that the river is in delta, there are many possibilities, and that we may even have left the river and gone into the ocean. John Cage

In his statement John Cage is referring to the development of the modern Western musical tradition. From the moment when modernism was born, around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, until the present day.

Spiritually Mahler was the beginning of modern music. Luciano Berio

The river at the beginning of the 20th century is the music of Gustav Mahler. Then the river split in two with Schonberg and Strawinsky. After that the river came into a delta of possibilties with the music of Edgard Varese, Pierre Boulez, KarlHeinz Stockhausen, John Cage, Elliott Carter, Luciano Berio a.o. Now we are in an ‘ocean’ of possibilties where three things determine our actions: the huge amount of people living on the planet, the amazing changes through the development of technologie and the interpenetration of the cultures in our ‘global village’.

I might say that the purpose of music is, as it always was, is to bring about an enjoyment of the life that we're living. And that life now, I think more than any other time in history, involves ‘mind’. Our technology has extended, what I call ‘the central nervous system’. So, the whole of creation is like a single mind. And that mind needs to come to terms with itself, so that it’s not split against itself. And so that that can be the enjoyment of being alive with all the other people on the same planet.

John Cage

Films for the Earth is part of the Songs of the Earth project conceived by Marina Mahler

Credits

Programma

INFORMATION
Please note that dates and times may change.
For updates consult the website www.festivaldispoleto.com

A Symphony of Films on Music

For me, filmmaking has always been a way of listening. I listen with my eyes, with my camera, with the rhythm of editing. Sound—especially music—is at the heart of how I experience the world. My films are extensions of this way of perceiving. What fascinates me is perception itself: how sound, time, and image shape our inner landscape. Music has always pulled me in, not just for its beauty or emotion, but for its architecture, its logic, its mystery. It lives in time, invisible yet deeply moving. I wanted my films to live that way too. Like Gustav Mahler said that a symphony should include all life.

When I started working with composers—some of the most radical thinkers and creators of the 20th and 21st centuries—I didn’t approach them as subjects. I approached them as collaborators, sometimes even as guides. I wasn’t interested in just documenting their lives. I wanted to enter their way of thinking, to allow the film to evolve with their spirit. With composers like Gustav Mahler, Edgard Varèse, John Cage, Elliott Carter, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Louis Ansriessen or Frank Zappa a.m., I was searching for a way to not only understand but also feel what they were trying to express—through silence, through chaos, through repetition, through structure. Each composer opened a door to a different universe.

Varèse once wrote: “The present-day composer refuses to die.” That line, printed on a Zappa album I discovered at thirteen, lit a fire in me. It led to more than fifty films on music, each a meditation on the deep ties between sound and cinema. After graduating from the Dutch Film Academy in 1982, I read Kandinsky’s The Spiritual in Art and I was struck by his idea that music, being the most abstract art form, gives the artist the greatest freedom to express. Kandinsky’s pointed out that the principles of music can be transformed to other art forms. I decided to devote my work to music that enlightens. Influenced by opposite film directors like Eisenstein and Tarkovsky, I approached film as a form of composition, using musical principles to guide cinematic structure. Both are time-based art forms, sharing structural elements like rhythm, space, and memory.

Luciano Berio once said that modernism began spiritually with Mahler. My relationship with the music of Gustav Mahler is one of deep recognition and emotional surrender. His symphonies feel like inner landscapes—raw, expansive, and unafraid of contradiction—where beauty and terror coexist, just like in life. Equally two shots in a film, placed side by side, they don’t merely create a supplement of each other—they awaken a new entity (Eisenstein, Lessons in editing) . From this idea I developed a deep fascination for juxtaposing opposites. I started with the juxtaposition of two great American composers, John Cage and Elliott Carter. Their working methods are the opposite of each other. John Cage taught me to embrace chance and the unintentional. He was one of the first to change my perspective completely. Marina Abramovic introduced me to John saying that the encounter would be worthwhile. In spending time with him, filming him, listening to him speak about silence, about chance, about non-intention, I began to realize that making a film could itself be an act of listening. He helped me understand that absence can be as powerful as presence. That silence is not empty. Carter, by contrast, showed me music as a field of layered times. Each instrument a consciousness, each rhythm a separate pulse. His complexity wasn’t cold—it was alive. Between Cage and Carter, I felt a new vision of being.

In all my films, I try to approach the edit like a musical composition. The cut is a note. The rhythm is in the pacing of the shots. Sometimes I’ll keep a long take because it holds tension, like a sustained chord. Other times, I’ll cut quickly to echo a staccato phrase or a burst of improvisation. I don’t use music simply as a background or a score. Music is the subject—but it also becomes the form.

In 2006, I believed I was finishing my cycle on modern music with Zappa and Varèse. But then I met Nader Mashayekhi, an Iranian composer and conductor. He expanded my horizon. He reminded me that the 21st-century soundscape extends beyond the West. Music from the rest of the world had to enter my films. What truly fascinates me now is not just modernity, but how it resonates with deep-rooted traditions. I believe the real avant-garde today lies in juxtaposition: when cultures meet, not to merge, but to speak, side by side. That insight became the foundation for my tetralogy.

In part 1 Gozaran: Time Passing, Mashayekhi places Persian music next to contemporary textures—both distinct, yet deeply engaged. In Inner Landscape, Guo Wenjing, a Chinese composer, surrounds fading Sichuan opera with Western instruments, preserving the core while gently supporting it. In Half Moon, Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, trained at Juilliard, bridges Arabic tradition with jazz and classical form, creating a sound rooted in Damascus and New York alike.

Each of these films became a space of listening, a space of meeting. And I, behind the camera, was there to witness the breath between traditions.

Now, in Timeless Breath, I journey into the soul of Indian classical music. Guided by sarangi master Dhruba Ghosh, I follow the voice of his instrument, bowed into silence and sound. Through this film, I hope to understand why music has always been my way into the world—and my way back to myself.

With every film, I ask: how can I shape silence, motion, rhythm, to reflect a polyphonic world? Whether the subject is Mahler, Stockhausen, Cage, or Mashayekhi, Azmeh or Ghosh, each demands a new language. I don't believe in imposing a fixed style. I believe in listening. To the music, to the maker, to the moment. My goal is not to illustrate, but to translate—to create a parallel form in cinema that breathes with the music it reflects.

I hope my films invite people to listen more deeply. Not just to music, but to time, to silence, to each other. I don't want to offer conclusions. I want to open spaces—for resonance, for curiosity, for transformation. Films for the earth is part of a visionary project initiated by Marina Mahler, inspired by the spirit of Gustav Mahler’s composition Das Lied von der Erde (Song of the Earth).

For me, filmmaking is not about capturing the past. It's about opening new ways of hearing, of seeing, of feeling. That is what music has always given me. And through film, I try to return the gift.

Frank Scheffer

Amsterdam, 11 May 2025

scarica pdf

Dates & Tickets

Free admission
TICKET OFFICE INFO
Fri
27
Jun
2025
at
18:00
Sala Pegasus
Corso Mazzini 46
at
Sala Pegasus
Corso Mazzini 46
at
Sala Pegasus
at
Sala Pegasus
at
Sala Pegasus
at
Sala Pegasus
at
Sala Pegasus
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Sala Pegasus
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Sala Pegasus
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Sala Pegasus
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Sala Pegasus
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Sala Pegasus
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Sala Pegasus
Timetable
28 Giugno
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:15
15:15
16:30
17:30
18:30
19:45
20:45
29 Giugno
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:15
15:15
16:30
17:30
18:30
19:45
20:45
30 Giugno
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:15
15:15
16:30
17:30
18:30
19:45
01 Luglio
10:00
11:00
12:00
13:15
14:15
15:30
16:30
17:45
20:30
21:30
02 Luglio
10:00
11:00
12:00
13:15
14:15
17:30
18:30
19:45
20:45
21:45
04 Luglio
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:15
15:15
16:30
17:30
18:30
19:45
20:45
05 Luglio
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:15
15:15
16:30
17:30
18:30
19:45
20:45
06 Luglio
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:15
15:15
16:30
17:30
18:30
19:45
20:45
07 Luglio
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:15
15:15
16:30
17:30
18:30
19:45
20:45
08 Luglio
10:00
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:15
15:15
16:30
17:30
18:30
20:45
21:45
09 Luglio
10:00
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:15
17:30
18:30
19:45
20:45
21:45

Playlist

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Biographies

Frank Scheffer

An acclaimed director, renowned for his poetic explorations in the world of music, sound, and image.

Founder of the production company Allegri Film, he has built a unique cinematic body of work dedicated to visionary composers and the evolution of sound between the 20th and 21st centuries.

Trained under the experimental filmmaker Frans Zwartjes and a graduate of the Dutch Film Academy, Scheffer created early works such as Zoetrope People (1982), featuring Coppola, Wenders, and Tom Waits, as well as documentaries on the Dalai Lama co-directed with Marina Abramović.

A long and profound collaboration with John Cage marked his turn toward musical themes, giving rise to distinctive films such as Chessfilmnoise, From Zero, and Time Is Music.

Since then, he has portrayed the worlds of Mahler, Schönberg, Stravinsky, Berio, Boulez, Stockhausen, Andriessen, Eno, and many others.

His trilogy dedicated to electronic music (Sonic Images, Sonic Fragments, Sonic Genetics) and the documentary In the Ocean, about the New York avant-garde scene, highlight his enduring interest in sonic innovation.

His intense artistic relationship with Frank Zappa resulted in several acclaimed films, including The Present Day Composer Refuses to Die and Phaze II.

Among his other significant works are portraits of Elliott Carter (A Labyrinth of Time), Tan Dun (Tea), Edgard Varèse (The One All Alone), and Nader Mashayekhi (Gozaran).

The films Ryoanji and How to Get Out of the Cage (2012) were part of the centenary celebrations for the birth of John Cage.

In recent years, Scheffer has premiered The Inner Landscape—a poetic meditation on the Chinese composer Guo Wenjing—and Si Fan at the Holland Festival, received great acclaim with The Perception, and created Gustav Mahler – Singer for the Earth (2022), in which Mahler’s music intertwines with a profound ecological awareness.

His most recent work, Half Moon (2025), dedicated to the Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, fuses film and performance into a moving portrait of artistic resilience.

Scheffer’s work has been celebrated with retrospectives at MoMA in New York, Wien Modern, and the Dutch Film Festival, confirming his unique role in the cinematic storytelling of music.

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68

PROGRAMMA COMPLETO
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