PEOPLE - THE FILM Vincent Moon’s journey through our magical PEOPLE Festival 2018. These moments out of time, in between spaces, the ritual, the coming together of 200 musicians to create and share to an audience of 5000 people. …all of these communal experiences that we cherish. To help us get through this winter, to remember how great it feels to be close, to sing loud, to cry together, to dance… to joyfully discover what waits behind the next door. For those who experienced this memorable week, those of you who have heard of it and for those who are curious.
Who gets the idea to write “Nine unfinished symphonies” - one of them perhaps the shortest Symphony in music history? Or "1001 sonatas’ - each lasting about a minute but in total being one of the longest pieces ever written? Like a postmodern Erik Satie the Belgium composer Boudewijn Buckinx is using music history as a playing field. The classical music audience is irritated, the avant-gardist wrinkles his nose... "Daisies in a Meadow" - that's how Buckinx described his "1001 Sonatas” for violin and piano, They play a leading role in our film, in the supporting roles the Spanish sun and the Belgian rain. The latter, however, did not show up at the set - just as you always have to be prepared for surprises with Boudewijn Buckinx. "Why is my music so simple? - Why is my music so complex?" With a wink, Buckinx gives various answers to these recurring questions. The portrait of an immensely productive artist who is radically taking his own path.
Show recorded on January 9, 1992 at the Opéra Garnier in Paris for the benefit of the Restos du Coeur.
Lebanon today. The traces of the civil war are all too tangible as government corruption becomes unbearable. In a country where conflict and peace are caught in an endless cycle, musicians from different backgrounds pool their talents to create an underground music scene. Each evokes his or her representation of Lebanon: its shifting geographical, political, historical and social borders, its painful passage through conflict and instability. A touching portrait of a young generation trying to build an oasis in a hostile environment where the forces of destruction continue to wreak havoc.
Show recorded at the Opéra Comique in Paris on March 6, 1995 for the benefit of the Restos du Coeur.
To sum up the life and work of British artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge is close to impossible. Not only because of the wide range of artistic disciplines, but also because of the timespan, since the mid 1960s to the present day, that has been saturated by hundreds of records, thousands of concerts, exhibitions, interviews, videos, spoken word performances, collages, sculptures, philosophy, cultural engineering, occultism and radical transgender concepts. A couple of descriptions are still valid after these 50 years of active creativity and provocation. P-Orridge is a romantic existentialist and a cultural engineer. Everything is both work as such and seed for cultural and behavioural change.