Brighton: Symphony of a City

Abstract

The project, originally conceived as a live cinema event for the Brighton Festival, 2016 re-interprets 'the city symphony', a key film genre of the silent era through a collaboration between Thynne as director and Ed Hughes as composer. It explores how the symphonic might be conceived to evoke a modern city in images and music through commenting on and mimicking Berlin: Symphony of a City (Ruttmann, 1927), a film at the heart of discussions about the relation of the 'poetic' and 'political' in documentary. It is inspired by Guy Maddin's suggestion that the potential of one technology, in the case silent film is never usually exhausted before another - here the 'talkies' succeeds it, and addresses the challenge of a purely visual evocation where meaning is created through graphic montage, and musical juxtaposition. By producing a musical, associative structure rather than one led by sound, speech and narrative it draws on the marginalized strand of documentary history represented by Berlin, A propos de Nice (Vigo, 1929) and Rain (Ivens,1930) which emphasizes the visual potential of the medium to imagine space and place. Symphonic form - the bringing together of diverse elements of the city into a set of movements - gives shape and pace to disparate activities and events; freedom from conventional story form allows for the serendipitous and the everyday to be foregrounded creating what Taussig suggests is 'a peripheral vision' not studied contemplation, a knowledge that is imageric and sensate rather than ideational.' Shortlisted for BAFTSS practice-led research awards, 2017. Reviews: Screenworks 7.2. Main feature on the dvd 'Symphonic Visions' from Metier, 2018.