The Sonic Look

Current films reward a close listening, because what one gets to hear veers confidently between tunes for intimate plays, soundtracks with pop appeal, and major league cinematic scores. At long last, a young generation of filmmakers, and German filmmakers in particular, feels at ease with music, and has taken to routinely using it as a basic element in filmic narration. THE SONIC LOOK serves fresh audilicious doses – short films, film excerpts, innovative tracks, unheard-of pieces –, but also presents remarkable visualizations of pre-existing music. 

Films tell stories. In images, sounds, and everything that happens in between, which Tom Tykwer has called »the marriage of music, sound, and image.« The key images in all of that are the ones arising in the audience's imagination, more often than not solely triggered by the score – because music spawns visualizations, paints pictures in the mind, realigns what one has seen; so all these pictures change again when new music sets in. THE SONIC LOOK: short films without words, but full of poesy; radio drama music that paints pictures on the black screen, pictures that fit the music. 

For finding adequate images to fit music is also something that will be discussed – with references to music clips and visualizations of music that have not originated from music television: videos created as backdrops for live concerts, films that were only meant to be used at film or art festivals, or clips directly developed for viral distribution via YouTube and the like. 

A presentation with many sample film clips. SoundTrack_Cologne's three masterminds, Michael P. Aust, Matthias Hornschuh, and Matthias Kapohl, will guide the audience through the program.