René Clair / Yan Maresz

René Clair’s (1898–1981) first film is a humorous and spirited narration, a fantastic masterpiece of avant-garde cinema making use of all available filmic tricks. A crazy sage has invented a machine that floods the vital world of Paris with absolute lethargy. Only the guardian of the Eiffel Tower and a small group of travellers escape the spell.

Yan Marez has designed a musical counterpoint to this historic film, a music that accompanies its images with various levels of complementarity and divergence. In particular the ambiance of the individual scenes, the psychology of the characters and the central theme of the relativity of time, the sense of time, are at the heart of the filmic and musical realisation. Unusual instrumentation and real-time electronics help to create the music’s particular timbre.