Cine-concert... without words!

When early cinema and live music come together.

The Municipality and the Val Mara Culture Commission are pleased to present a special film evening. In Piazza Giuseppe Motta in Melano, we will host the project “…without words!”, performed by the Quinn brothers (Brian, Simon and Nolan) together with pianist Johannes von Ballestrem.

In 2007, the professional path of the group’s members, until then exclusively musical, crossed with cinema: from a first commission to compose a soundtrack for a silent film came an intense activity of composing music for films and devising new formats capable of bringing the live dimension, emblematic of music, into a cinematic context.

Today they collaborate with cinemas, film associations, film and music festivals, cultural and literary events, conferences, museums, libraries and many other institutions, including the Locarno Film Festival, Radiotelevisione svizzera, the Swiss National Park, the Swiss Alpine Club, the Kantonsbibliothek Graubünden and the Estonian Antarctic Expedition.

A portfolio of more than twenty titles, including fundamental works in the history of cinema, is presented annually on tour in Switzerland and across Europe.

Bergfilm!

Directed by Dr. Arnold Fanck

black and white, silent, German intertitles, 54 minutes

Original music by Simon, Nolan and Brian Quinn for the Swiss Alpine Club, Radiotelevisione svizzera and Oggimusica

A selection of scenes without narrative continuity, taken from the work of Arnold Fanck, the inventor of mountain cinema, paints a picture of mountaineering a hundred years ago. Filmed on location and without stunt doubles, the future directors Luis Trenker and Leni Riefenstahl, appearing here as actors, tackle the walls and glaciers of the Alps (Matterhorn, Forno/Albigna, Bernina/Palü, Mont Blanc). Interspersed are some of the very first aerial shots on film, made by the German aviation ace Ernst Udet.