Films, talks & events
Holland Festival 2021
11 — 26 June 2021
Special attention will also be paid to Dutch filmmaker Frank Scheffer, who made a name for himself with uniquely designed music documentaries. His latest production, the opera film Si Fan, will have its world premiere.
This year, Eye puts the spotlight on Ryuichi Sakamoto, one of the associate artists of the Holland Festival 2021. Sakamoto's latest work Time will premiere during the festival, an unconventional wordless opera he made together with visual artist Shiro Takatani. Eye will organise seven accompanying programmes in June focusing on Sakamoto's illustrious career.
Ryuichi Sakamoto
Ryuichi Sakamoto (Tokyo, 1952) got his start as the frontman of Yellow Magic Orchestra and garnered fame over the past decades as an innovative composer for film and interdisciplinary artist. Sakamoto wrote the scores for Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), Sheltering Sky (1990) and The Revenant (2015), among many others. He also created scores for contemporary dance and opera performances. He is an inspiration to a new generation of composers and artists.
In addition to screening a number of special, lesser-known films for which Sakamoto wrote the score, Eye will host, in collaboration with Holland Festival, three special evenings on Sakamoto with young film composers, interviews and introductions by specialists.
De Groene Amsterdammer podcast
Programmer Thijs Havens spoke to De Groene Amsterdammer about Sakamoto (in Dutch).
Listen to the podcast
Between Past and Future
Frank Scheffer (1956) made a name for himself with particularly inventively designed documentaries about the work of modern composers such as John Cage, Pierre Boulez, Frank Zappa and Edgar Varèse. In his films, images, sound and themes become linked in associatively edited sequences that transport you into the composer's world of experience.
Between Past and Future is a special evening on Scheffer's documentary Inner Landscape (2019) and the 50-minute opera film Si Fan (2021, world premiere). Scheffer followed the Chinese composer Guo Wenjing, who provided the traditional chamber opera with its own music, and made the performance into a film. The Chinese musician Wu Wei, a virtuoso of traditional Chinese musical instruments, will provide a short live performance for this performance.
Films, talks & more
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