The Luxembourg City Film Festival, "LuxFilmFest", created an unforgettable experience from 29 February to 10 March, hosting line-up of established directors, actors, as well as first-timers and all kinds of cinephiles. The festival garnered international and national attention while offering unique events to its audience.
This year's edition didn't forget music lovers too by featuring special music video events, short films with musical touch and awards for sound design!
To begin with, The Festival hosted a very special evening on March 4; Showcase Shorts Made In/With Luxembourg. "For the first time, the Film Akademie teamed up with LuxFilmFest to showcase the short films in an event entirely dedicated to promoting Luxembourg's emerging talent." The showcase, followed by a party with almost 400 hundred people on Monday night, also allowed all people from different corners of the industry to network and celebrate their success.
That remarkable evening, presented many short films with a relation with music, specifically:
Crackle, a film by Fränk Grotz, the music is composed by Philippe Schirrer and starring Philippe Meyrer, takes place in a Music Store. "Paul, a lonely vinyl salesman, is trying to get closer to a woman who fascinates him. But the situation soon sends him spiraling out of control."
The repetitiveness and the banality of his life and the cyclic form of Vinyl, and therefore the idea of repeatedly coming back to the same point while seemingly going forward, presents almost a heavenly harmony. He was about the break that vicious circle with the new girl coming into the picture, yet, it only becomes a "crackle" in the surface, distorting the purity.
The Beast Within Us (La Bête qui sommeille en nous), written and directed by Jonathan Becker, explores the depths of the soul of man. This dark and philosophical atmosphere is completed by the original music by Olivier Defradat in a perfect way.
It Will Not End You, directed by Lucie Wahl, shows an audio-visual poetry with the music
of Stefan Grimus. Made for this short film, Grimus created the sound based on electronically modified scratches.
The Golden Record, film by Stephen Korytko, is "a dialogue-free film about communication in a recording studio in the 70s". While the characters were recording sounds for representing human life for the "Golden Record" (to send to the space for a possibility of discovery by aliens), the work leads to the exploration and finally discovery of their own humanity.
Another highlight of the Festival was 5th edition of Lost Weekend 48 hours film competition which introduced a new award for Sound Design. This year, 17 teams competed for the 3 big awards, which enable them to make another short film.
There were also side awards and the newly introduced Sound Design award went to Team Feierblumm`s "Nocturnal Masquerade" in the gala on March 6th in Cinémathèque. Film music is composed by Lara Grogan and Maël Fontana and Sound Engineer was Labio Tsaganas. It is not clear whether the award went to the film music composers or to the sound engineer, however, giving a price for "audio" is still ahead of the LuxFilmFest itself. Congratulations !
Audience Award winner Team Absurd's "Awakening", used Luxembourg based DJ Hokube's "The Wizard" and Erik Satie's "The Gymnopedie No.1".
The third event special for music enthusiasts, was the Music Video screening organised by Rocklab & Rockhal on March 8th in Cine Utopia. It was followed by a networking cocktail at Gudde Wellen with directors and musicians who are looking for music video directors.
The screening featured following artists of the Luxembourg music scene: Alagoa, Authentica, Blanket Hill, CHAiLD, Dock In Absolute, Francis of Delirium, Fumage, Gana, Gilles Grethen Quartet & Strings, In The Atlas, Jayo Brudjez, Josh Island, L’éphémère, Leen, Lucas Ferraz, Maz Univerze, Nicool, Say Yes Dog, Seed To Tree, Serge Tonnar, Sublind, The Aquatic Museum.
From classical music to hip-hop, witnessing the wide range of musicians work and listening their songs were eye-opening.
As a note, I was surprised that there were no award for music in the main festival awards. We are used to see awards such as "Original Song", "Original Score", "Sound", etc. in the other festivals. Even though Luxembourg is a smaller one, that would have been really nice to have an award for music to appreciate the talented musicians, composers and producers in Luxembourg.
LuxFilmFest achieved a great success this year, by being the event where everyone wanted to be at, for 10 days, and hosting renowned artists like Viggo Mortensen, Gaspar Noe and Vicky Krieps. From gala night to parties, from masterclasses with directors to award ceremony, it will be remembered happily by young and experienced audience. We are already looking forward to the next year, with the hope of more events and movies focusing music !
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