Tributes - Pulse

Year2011 Duration65 min. DirectorBill Morrison

Music composer: Simon Christensen
Musician: Kundi Bombo
Producer: Klaus Ib Jørgensen for Edition-S

Festivals

2011 Royal Theatre Playhouse, Copenhagen, DK
2012 National Gallery of Art, Washington, USA
2011 Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, Montreal, CAN
2012 International Film Festival Rotterdam, NL
2012 BAFICI, Buenos Aires, AR
2012 Onion City Film Festival, Chicago, USA

Spanish premiere

Tributes-Pulse is a collaboration between American filmmaker Bill Morrison and Danish composer and percussionist Simon Christensen. Christensen originally conceived of the project as a tribute to four American composers, Charles Ives (1874-1954), Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997), Steve Reich (b.1936), and Trent Reznor (b. 1965). The project is comprised of four movements, with the themes of Shifting, Multiple, Across and Beat, respectively corresponding to each composer.

The idea of Pulse is explored in both the music and the film. Christensen conceived of the role of Pulse - the rhythmic recurrence of vibration - in the music of these four composers. But pulse is also explored as the through-line in a life, civilization, and nature.

Through image and sound Morrison and Christensen have created a requiem for the 20th century - the persistence of a pulse, the contractions of the heart.

Bill Morrison

Bill Morrison has been called “one of the most adventurous American filmmakers” (Variety, 12/11/11). Perhaps best known for his 2002 feature Decasia, Morrison has built a filmography of more than thirty projects, often pairing archival film material with contemporary scores. Spark of Being, his re-telling of Frankenstein with a score by Dave Douglas, won the LA Film Critics Award for Best Independent / Experimental Film of 2011.