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What happens erstwhile a centuries-old French soundless movie meets a futuristic soundtrack? The Édouard Michelin Auditorium astatine Alliance Française de Madras volition alteration into a abstraction wherever cinema and dependable collide this weekend. French percussionist and composer Stéphane Scharlé brings Paris Qui Dort (The Crazy Ray), René Clair’s 1924 soundless sci-fi classic, to beingness done a unrecorded soundtrack performed wholly connected his self-created augmented drums.
Set successful Paris, the movie follows Albert, a nighttime watchman who wakes atop the Eiffel Tower to find the metropolis mysteriously immobilised by a huffy scientist’s ray. What unfolds is simply a metropolis without motion, clip oregon consequence, explored done images from the Eiffel Tower and the Champs-Élysées to Place de la Concorde and the Opéra Garnier. Restored successful 4K by the Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé Foundation, this aboriginal enactment of subject fabrication successful French cinema inactive retains its quality and societal satire — a reflection connected freedom, powerfulness and quality conscience successful times of conflict.
The augmented drums blend acoustic drumming with loops, physics textures, and improvisation, turning the centuries-old movie into a sensory experience. The screening of Paris Qui Dort, a surreal black-and-white masterpiece, is often hailed arsenic the archetypal French subject fabrication film. “When the movie was archetypal shown a 100 years ago, successful 1925, determination was nary dependable — the exertion simply didn’t beryllium yet. Back then, musicians often performed unrecorded alongside the screen, and sometimes adjacent narrators would explicate what was happening connected screen,” says Stéphane.
“The augmented drum is an instrumentality that I created a fewer years agone — it lets maine play regular drums, but besides motorboat galore physics sounds, loops, and effects astatine the aforesaid time. So I tin fundamentally make a full orchestral soundtrack during the film. Every clip I constitute the soundtrack, I bash it otherwise due to the fact that I similar to improvise,” helium added. He weaves a soundscape that draws connected minimal electro, improvisational jazz, and cinematic ambience, capturing the frozen satellite of Paris successful the 1920s.
A founding subordinate of jazz corporate OZMA, Scharlé has performed implicit 600 concerts successful implicit 45 countries. His foray into solo show marks a caller chapter. “In France, cine-concerts are rather common. I americium blessed to bring this to the Indian audience, which is antithetic from my accustomed jazz quintet.”
The evening is presented by the French Institute successful India and the Alliance Française network.
On November 7, from 7.30pm onwards astatine Édouard Michelin Auditorium, Alliance Française de Madras, Nungambakkam. Entry free.
