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Minima's repertoire started in 2006 with a score
for the cult classic The Seashell and the
Clergyman and has grown over the years to an extensive collection of films,
with a different musical approach for each title. Click on the picture for
further information and clips from the film.
With a bit of notice, we can also provide a
semi-improvised score for any other film or programme of short films. Films we
have improvised to in the past include the British melodrama Piccadilly at the Curzon Soho in 2008,
Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger at the
Prince Charles Cinema in 2009, a selection of Lotte Reiniger short films at the
Mayor’s Thames Festival in 2010 and the only Romanian silent film in existence,
Manasse, at the East End Film
Festival 2011.
Nosferatu (1922, 92 mins)
Based on the Dracula story, this is a true spine-tingler
with many now-iconic scenes of the blood-sucking count. Darkly humorous and
tender too - this is a story of yearning and the search for fulfilment.
Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924, 112 mins)
Made in the early years of the Soviet Union, this film is part political
melodrama, part space romp. The crystalline Martian film sets are timeless and
they set the template of a vision of the future - for decades to come. Minima’s
soundtrack was commissioned by Alastair Cameron at Bristol’s Arnolfini gallery
in 2009.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919, 72 mins)
The classic German expressionist
film. Robert Wiene’s use of distorted sets, sinister
shadows and unnerving characters created a paranoid, unreal world at a time of
despair and soul-searching throughout Europe.
Crossways (1928, 74 mins)
Teinosuke Kinugasa's classic of the avant-garde, and one of the first
Japanese films ever seen in the West. Crossways
is a visual tour-de-force, unfolding in hallucinations, superimpositions
and dissolves of spinning archery targets and painted geishas parading around
the gaudy streets.
Manasse (1925, 84 mins)
Jean Mihail’s silent masterpiece is set in a
small town in Eastern Romania at the turn of the 20th Century and features a
tender love story between a Romanian man and a Jewish Woman.
The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928, 40 mins)
The rarely seen French cult
film. A dream-world of forbidden passion - stunning imagery;
a beautifully structured and immaculately edited film.
Symphonie diagonale (1924, 7 mins)
The definitive early short film
animation. Viking Eggeling was seeking to create a new
kind of cinema, a "musical-cubistic style of film, completely divorced
from the naturalistic style." This seven-minute gem is usually part of the
Seashell and the Clergyman programme
and features a mechanical-yet-lyrical score of cross-tempos and rhythms.
H2O (1929, 12 mins)
A “cinematic tone poem” - a
study of the patterns of light and shadows on water. An evolving musical score, developing through live improvisation.