A Shape of Time - the composer Jo Kondo (2016)
• March 18th, 2016 • 1h 40min
Documentary
Overview
Jo Kondo (*1947) is one of the most interesting composers of contemporary music in Japan. His music is composed intuitively and at the same time it is highly abstract. Without clear directionality and at the same time not without form. For a Japanese audience it sounds “Western” and in the West it is regarded “Japanese”. A music in between categories. Like Kondo’s music the film is shifting between places and directions: a concert in the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam, an elaborate sushi bar in Tokyo, a CD-production in a Cologne radio station, the Zuisenji temple in Kondo’s neighborhood in Kamakura. Kondo wants his music to appear “normal”, without spectacular surface or narrative elements. A concept of “normality” you may also find in the films of Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, who – like Kondo – spent most of his life in Kamakura.
Make sure to check your pop-up blocker!!
Trailer
Similar Movies
Knots and Fields
Released on: 2010-01-01
Documentary, Music
Knots and Fields examines the aesthetic debates and tensions that have animated the Darmstadt course...
Soñarse muerto
Released on: 2013-05-13
Documentary
José Manuel Ortiz, 32, has had a great interest and sensitivity towards music since he was very youn...
Olivier Messiaen: The Music of Faith
Released on: 1984-01-01
Music, Documentary
Olivier Messiaen played a leading role in the evolution of 20th-century music. In this classic inter...
The Conductor
Released on: 2021-06-10
Documentary, Music
Leonard Bernstein’s protégée Marin Alsop reveals how she smashed the glass ceiling to become an inte...
No Ideas But in Things - the composer Alvin Lucier
Released on: 2012-03-23
Documentary
“Don’t ask me what I mean, ask me what I’ve made” – inspired by this motto, the documentary accompan...
I Am Sitting in a Room
Released on: 1970-10-12
Documentary
I am sitting in a room is a sound art piece by American composer and sound artist Alvin Lucier compo...
Line by Line - a film on the composer Ernstalbrecht Stiebler
Released on: 2014-11-15
Documentary
A cello piece A punt ride Thoughts about music and composition The eight lines of Ernstalbrecht S...
To B or to B Flat - the composer Boudewijn Buckinx
Released on: 2019-05-11
Documentary
Who gets the idea to write “Nine unfinished symphonies” - one of them perhaps the shortest Symphony...
The Fire and the Rose
Released on: 1990-01-01
Documentary
A documentary on the life and work of the composer Sofia Gubaidulina.
All Star Video
Released on: 1985-01-21
Animation, Documentary, Music
A compilation of avant-garde artwork and talent of the mid to late 20th century hosted by Ryuichi Sa...
Van Gogh & Japan
Released on: 2019-06-04
History, Documentary
"I envy the Japanese" Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo. In the exhibition on which this film is b...
The Lost Paradise
Released on: 2015-09-08
Documentary
He is the most performed contemporary composer in the world. And yet he rarely ventures out in publi...
Hail Bop! A Portrait of John Adams
Released on: 2006-01-01
Documentary
Shot over the course of a year, this intimate portrait of provocative composer John Adams presents s...
Choreography for a Camera and Dancers
Released on: 1968-02-27
Documentary
The first experimental dance film from Croatia, which pays homage to the pioneer of experimental and...
Philip Glass: Looking Glass
Released on: 2005-01-01
Documentary
This documentary captures the overflowing energy and activity of one today's greatest composers, Phi...
Tomorrow will be the same
Released on: 2017-03-09
Music, Mystery, Romance, Adventure
Insatiable lust reigned over senseless flesh. Like august flies, trying to escape certain death, pe...