FILMS/
SPECIAL FORCES
Spotlight
USA/Canada, 2007, 60 minutes
SHOWTIMES
Fri, May 4 / 06:30 / SFMOMA / SPEC04S
CREDITS
- source
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Living Cinema EMAIL: bob.ostertag@mac.com
There are a number of virtues to "live cinema," a hybrid form of multimedia performance that includes live, real-time generation, composition and editing of moving images and sound. Living Cinema, an internationally renowned collaboration between San Francisco composer Bob Ostertag and Quebecois animator Pierre Hébert, maximizes the performative aspects of its live cinema events, bringing immediacy and topical relevance to astute and biting cultural commentary. Special Forces, a pointed and urgent view of the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, will exemplify this approach. Ostertag and Hébert presented its world premiere at the Irtijal ’07 Free Improvised Music Festival in Beirut, Lebanon in early April. While in the Middle East, Living Cinema gathered images from Beirut to use in the work’s North American premiere at SFIFF 50, thereby making it as current as possible. The project is a meditation on, and critique of, the relationships between war, video games and technology. To that end, Ostertag and Hébert have customized standard game pads (like he ones that come with Nintendo) so that they will trigger sounds and images from a variety of sources, including video games, war footage and original images filmed during Living Cinema’s travels. Ostertag will create a score and soundscape comprised entirely of video game sound clips, while Hébert will create animations on the spot that will interact with original and altered images and sounds. The resulting visual and aural collage will convey a pointed, playful and urgent view of the current, complex situation in the Middle East.
—Sean Uyehara
North American Premiere. Sponsored by the Consulate General of Canada.