Sound on Film

Hal Hartley and Louis Andriessen, Nicolas Roeg and Adrian Utley of Portishead, The Brother's Quay and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Werner Herzog and John Tavener are the composer-director partnerships who have created four specially commissioned, 15 minute music films for the BBC.

The four films which make up the fourth series of Sound on Film, have been jointly commissioned from independent production companies by BBC 2 and Pipeline Films in association with NPS television. The films are firmly placed at todays creative edge, and feature four composers and four filmmakers with widely different styles - visionaries united by their individuality.

In the first film, entitled "Pilgrimage", a partnership between Werner Herzog and John Taverner can be seen. The subject of their collaboration is simple; human pathos and the search for redemption, filmed on the pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico. The theme is the deep spirituality, religious fervour and the suffering if the pilgrims. The arrive in pain, exhilaration and religious ecstasy, often on their knees, having travelled for hundreds of kilometres.

The second film is "Sound" in which the dark tones of Adrian Utley of Portishead combine with Nicolas Roeg's visually complex, multi-layered film featuring supermodel Claudia Schiffer.

The third, entitled "The New Math" sees the collaboration of the avant garde music of Louis Andriessen is paired with the cool and laconic gaze of Hal Hartley.

Finally in "In Absentia" Karlheinz Stockhausen teams up with the 'alchemists if animation', The Brothers Quay