THE MOVEMENT OF PHILL NIBLOCK

The very beginning of the film makes you think about a filmed concert: Phill Niblock is a composer. Since 1968, his music has been unwinding sound textures in which chords pile up and micro-intervals insinuate themselves. In 1958, he started out in New York City as a photographer and a filmmaker. His concerts are usually accompanied by a projection of his films or video files, arranged by a computer. He uses extracts from Movement of working people, in which there is an unstable connection between the protagonists’ sometimes repetitive activity and his music. Maurits Wouters’ film suddenly leaves the concert and tries to penetrate this musical fl ow through other ways. The similarity between Wouters’ title and that of the 16mm film series shot by Niblock from 1973 to 2010 in remote areas of China, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Hong Kong, Hungary, Portugal… heralds the way Niblock is going to be stripped of his posture as an ever-performing composer, while avoiding the commemorative portrait, to favour instead activities devoid of any special musical or staging effect. This is what makes the film so singular: no glorious celebration of a fifty-year musical career is to infl ate the succession of images. Each step further leads to a better understanding of the composer’s daily life, even if it involves showing how the situation may get unsettled with a few musicians sometimes. For instance when one of them says that he stroke the wrong key. The point isn’t to disclose mundane attitudes, but to get closer to what you might call an experimental art.