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Winner

Pierrot Lunaire

Runtime:
50 min.
Year of Production:
2014
Country:
Germany/Canada
Director:
Cast:
Susanne Sachsse
Production Company:
Jürgen Brüning Filmproduktion
Berlinale Section:
Forum
Berlinale Category:
Feature Film
Teddy Award:
Teddy Jury Award

In 1912 the actress Albertine Zehme asked the composer Arnold Schönberg to set to music part of the Pierrot Lunaire-poems by the Belgian Albert Giraud: For five musicians and a female singer Schönberg arranged 21 of the 50 poems to become one of his ground-breaking works for music theatre. In 2011 the conductor Premil Petrovic asked the filmmaker Bruce LaBruce to direct a stage version of Pierrot Lunaire with actress Susanne Sachsse singing and performing in the title role. The concept for the stage production is grounded in Schönberg’s understanding of cabaret, which took him to a dreamworld, full of “decadent longing, guilt, rapture and fear”, endowed with horror scenarios and an ironic-satiric humour. In 2013 LaBruce took Pierrot Lunaire to the streets of Berlin to film a dark story of longing, love, and transgression. This film features a soundtrack with Petrovic’s interpretation of Schönberg’s musical melodrama, sung by Sachsse. Based on a true story, LaBruce’s Pierrot Lunaire lends an appropriately radical queercore vision to one of the most innovative contributions to atonal music. 

"While I listened to the music of Arnold Schönberg I tried to associate a concept that would match well with the mood of his atonal music on the one hand, and on the other hand could be combined with the poems by Albert Giraud in a more contemporary context. From the jungle of thoughts of my unconscious rose a story that is supposed to have happened decades ago in Toronto, and that is both odd and universal […]: A young girl that regularly dresses as a boy falls in love and seduces a young girl that has no clue that her lover has the same sex. When the girl introduces ‘her boyfriend’ to her father he becomes skeptical and unmasks the fraud [and] does not allow them to ever see the other again. Furious and delusional the ‘boy’ develops an adventurous plan to prove his true ‘masculinity’ to the father of his lover." (Bruce LaBruce)

Bruce LaBruce is a filmmaker, photographer, writer, and artist based in Toronto but working internationally.

BIOGRAFIE Bruce LaBruce

Born in Southampton, Canada in 1964, he attended film school in Toronto and studied film theory at York University. His film Hustler White screened in the Panorama in 1996 and was his first international cinema success. His work has often featured in the Berlinale, most recently Pierrot Lunaire which screened in the 2014 Forum Expanded and won the Teddy Award. He has also directed numerous music videos and theatre plays and contributes writing and photographs to international magazines, newspapers and websites. His work as an artist has appeared in numerous international exhibitions.

FILMOGRAFIE Bruce LaBruce (selection)

2017 Ulrike's Brain  2017 Refugee's Welcome  2017 Ulrike's Brain  2017 The Misandrists  2014 Pierrot Lunaire  2013 Gerontophilia  2013 Defense de Fumer  2012 Offing Jack  2010 L.A Zombie  2010 Weekend In Alphaville  2009 The Bad Breast  2008 Give Piece of Ass a Chance  2007 Otto  2004 The Raspberry Reich  1998 Skin Flick  1996 Hustler White  1994 Super 8 1/2   1991 Slam!  1991 No Skin Off My Ass  1988 I Know What It's Like to be Dead  1987 Boy/Girl  1987 Bruce and Pepper Wayne Gacy's Home Movies 

Bruce La Bruce IMDb
Trailer (german)
Interview with Bruce LaBruce

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