SOUNDFRAMES. CINEMA AND MUSIC ON SHOW
The National Cinema Museum in Turin is presenting SOUNDFRAMES. CINEMA AND MUSIC ON SHOW, an innovative project sprung from a concept by Donata Pesenti Campagnoni and curated by Grazia Paganelli and Stefano Boni. Its co-curator is Maurizio Pisani, the director of the SeeYouSound International Music Film Festival, which has reached its fourth edition this year and for which the exhibition is an ideal continuation and expansion.
This exhibition is dedicated to Gianni Rondolino.
SoundFrames is an innovative exhibition recounting cross-links throughout the arts, and the cross-influences between two different artistic languages, cinema and music, and has completely innovative traits compared to the past. Unique in its diversity and the wealth of its content, it uses multimediality as a vehicle for offering the public an immersive, experiential and total visit into the universe of cinema and music, also thanks to its wireless headphones and to intelligent and advanced technology. It is a vital exhibition, which touches the sensitive chords within a spectator and which is mapping out a new path.
The visitors’ circuit is developed along the helicoidal ramp: 9 themed areas, over 130 film sequences screened on 60 monitors, totalling 90 metres of linear screening, almost as if to form an ideal film recounting the thousands of ways in which music and cinema images have met for over a century. The circuit is two-fold: chronological and thematic.
It starts from silent cinema, the first expression of the relationship between these two arts. Here, music used to be performed during screenings: the pianist improvised in order to cover the annoying sound of the projector. Only afterwards did film directors realise that they could venture further and create something new. This is where music began highlighting the power of images.
The following stage is the musical, which was born almost at once after the advent of sound: the narrative and dramaturgic development of the plot was structured upon songs and dancing. From this point onwards, the chronological circuit blends with the thematic ones. Starting from the section dedicated to great composers, which highlights how they imposed original music scores on the Hollywood production system: music translated emotions and soundtracks were born.
However, some authors recognised the capacity music had for being much more than a mere accompaniment for pictures, charging it with a more complex sense and function compared to the past. The section dedicated to auteur cinema shows this particular relationship, which developed between the nouvelle vague and New Hollywood.
Music documentaries established themselves as a narrative genre in the 1960s with the arrival of rock and independent filmmakers. New ways of presenting film fiction in relationship to music are biopics (biographical films which reconstruct important moments in the life vita and work of artists) and musical films, capable of inventing imaginary lives within the multiple worlds of music.
Horror is the film genre that was most able to exploit the disquieting aspect conveyed to pictures by music, by amplifying its sensations.
The section dedicated to the magic agreement shows how the film industry and the recording one mutually supported and promoted one another, starting from the Fifties, with the aim of reaching new commercial targets.
With the progressive diffusion of television and the consequent loss of importance for the radio, the recording industry employed a new audiovisual format as a promotional tool, the videoclip. Many cinema directors dedicated themselves to it, underlining their formal and productive closeness to music yet again. Videoclips have effectively become a form of cinema, which has experimented with increasingly extreme frontiers over the past few years.
The final part of the circuit, at the top of the helicoidal ramp, features six interactive rooms, thus completing an emotional journey into the music universe of cinema, where one can be an active part within the interactive game between music and the Seventh Art. Finally, at the acme of their immersion in the exhibition, visitors will end their experience in the last room, where it says goodbye before an image in absolute silence.
The Temple Hall, the heart of the museum, will be fully made use of instead, with its facilities as a cinema theatre and as a stage, for creating live soundtracks for silent films, experimental performances and meetings with the great protagonists of contemporary music closely linked with cinema. A packed events calendar will feature Ernst Reijseger, Werner Herzog’s favourite composer, the Marlene Kuntz band with actor Claudio Santamaria, composer and filmmaker Michael Nyman, author-singer Colapesce, Teho Teardo and the Julie’s Haircut band among its stars.
Several activities for schools and for the public are envisaged for the whole duration of the exhibition, including guided tours and itineraries in darknes,s led by visually impaired people, laboratories for families, meetings for teachers, screenings at the Cinema Massimo, visits for students, laboratories for schools, also in collaboration with other institutions, and workshop.
Information ad Facilitated Access
Cards for consultation are available In order to favour visits at the exhibition: highly legible exhibition texts in Italian, English, French, German and Spanish; an easy text in Italian and English; a text in Braille. Along the ramp, QR codes/NFC located on panels will activate videos with a LIS (Italian Signs Language) interpreter and subtitles in Italian. The Braille labels on the handrail show the exhibition sections titles to visitors with visual disabilities.
The explanations panels on display are in Italian and in English.
The sensor platform
This platform, planned by Alfredo Di Gino Puccetti, works with a transduction system which transforms sound into vibrations thanks to its wooden surface.
The person on the platform vibrates together with it and the vibration arrives very rapidly to emotion centres, favouring an increased knowledge of one’s body and the development of sensorial memory.
With the support of this platform, music from the anthological sequences projected onto the large screens in the Temple Hall is transformed into vibration, to offer visitors the opportunity of experimenting music physically, additionally providing essential support for deaf people, who are offered other fruition tools along the exhibition circuit.
An exhaustive catalogue published by the National Cinema Museum, by curator Carlo Griseri, rounds-off the exhibition, including texts by Matteo Pennacchia, Francesco Giugiaro, Fabrizio Dividi, Alessandro Battaglini, Paolo Campana, Carlo Griseri and Federica Ceppa.
The exhibition is organised in close collaboration with SeeYouSound International Music Film Festival, the first festival in Italy dedicated to international music-themed cinema, scheduled from 26 January to 4 February at the Cinema Massimo in Turin: 62 films, among which 1 international premiere, 1 European premiere and 27 Italian premieres, divided into 4 competitive sections, 2 out of competition showcases and 1 retrospective, accompanied by panels, meetings and events all dedicated to Cinema & Music.
The SEEYOUSOUND opening – on Friday 26 January at 9.00 p.m. at the Cinema Massimo – is organised by the National Cinema Museum and will feature a live soundtrack performance for the film Ingeborg Holm, by Victor Sjöström, by musicians Corrado Nuccini, Iosonouncane and Enrico Gabrielli. An evening which is a perfect continuation for the inauguration of #SoundFrames.
The exhibition is organised with patronage from Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali e del turismo.
Founding members: Regione Piemonte, Città di Torino, Compagnia di San Paolo, Fondazione CRT, GTT, Associazione Museo Nazionale del Cinema.
Main media partner: Rai
Official carrier: Air France
Techincal sponsors: Reale Mutua – Agenzia Antonelliana, Merula, Diplomàtico, DNA Concerti, SuperBudda
Cultural partners: Rai Orchestra, OGR, Giuseppe Verdi” State Music Conservatoire“ in Turin, Salone Internazionale del Libro, Lovers Film Festival, Sotto18 Film Festival & Campus, Piemonte Movie, Museo Ettore Fico, Dams, Fish&Chips Film Festival, Distretto Cinema.
Media partners: Rai Movie, Rai Cultura, Rai News 24, Radio 2, Radio 3, La Stampa.