Fred Frith

Nascimento : 1949-02-17, Heathfield, Sussex, England, UK

História

English musician, composer and professor, who is known for his avant-garde works involving electric guitars, film soundtracks and using improvisations in his music. He first gained prominence as a member of progressive rock band Henry Cow, in the 1970s, and collaborated with various musicians and bands throughout his career. Since the 1980s, he has composed music for film, theatre and dance. In addition, he was Professor of Composition in the Music Department at Mills College in Oakland, California until his retirement in 2018.

Filmes

I'll be your mirror
Music
The artist Johanna Faust is about to leave her children to finally devote herself to her art again. A vague memory comes to her mind: Didn't her grandmother do the same thing, with terrible consequences? The intimate road movie tells of lost mothers and abandoned children, of the temptations and the price of self-fulfilment, of the abysses of motherhood and of the deep longing for another life.
Rhythm in the Backstroke
Music
Light - Movement - Time - Memory - Joy
Leaning Into the Wind: Andy Goldsworthy
Original Music Composer
Thomas Riedelsheimer’s landmark Rivers and Tides inventively documented artist Andy Goldsworthy as he created his wondrously ephemeral site-specific sculptures, spun from nature. Fifteen years later, Goldsworthy is still appealingly engaged in his philosophical and tactical exploration of the natural world. Leaning Into the Wind is a collaborative sequel—a visual and aural sensation that takes viewers into the hillsides, terrains, and other outdoor spaces where Goldsworthy feels most at home and inspired.
Zen for Nothing
Original Music Composer
Hidden in the wooded mountains on the west coast of Japan lies the small Zen monastery Antaiji. A young woman sets off to immerse herself through autumn, winter and spring in the adventures of monastic life. The young woman is Sabine Timoteo from Switzerland. The abbot of the monastery is Muho Noelke, born in Berlin. An interplay between the philosophy of the Japanese Zen master Kodo Sawaki and the surprises brought forth by everyday life.
Last Day of Freedom
Original Music Composer
When Bill Babbitt realizes his brother Manny has committed a crime he agonizes over his decision to call the police.
Fritz Hauser: Sound Explorer
Music
A documentary about experimental drummer Fritz Hauser.
Between Two Worlds
Music
'Between Two Worlds' is a personal exploration of the community and family divisions that are redefining American Jewish identity and politics. The filmmakers own families are battlegrounds over loyalty to Israel, interpretations of the Holocaust, intermarriage and a conversion to Islam, and a secret communist past. Filmed in the United States and Israel, this first person documentary begins with a near riot at a Jewish Film Festival in San Francisco, shows an agonizing battle over divestment from Israel on a university campus, and reveals how hard it is for minorities in America to maintain ethnic identity in the face of generational change. Who speaks for a divided community at the crossroads? 'Between Two Worlds' has the exhilarating energy and fierce commitment of Jewish conversation itself.
Raiva
Original Music Composer
A schoolboy uses his cellphone camera to shoot intimate interviews with people working at a New York fashion house and secretly posts them on the internet. Result: a bitterly funny expose of an industry in crisis, during a week in which an accident on the runway becomes a murder investigation, and denial leads to devastation.
The Time that Rests
Original Music Composer
The time that Rests is a contemplative look at the daily life of the José Horwitz Barak Hospital, one of the oldest psychiatric facilities in Chile, located in the north of Santiago. It is not a film about madness, but about the passing of time in a certain place, which is reflected in simple things, in faces, in objects, nature, places, details, the humanity of the people portrayed. It is a film where every subtle visual and sound element becomes relevant.
Attwenger Adventure
Drei gegen Troja
Original Music Composer
Touch the Sound
Original Music Composer
A documentary which explores the connections among sound, rhythm, time, and the body by following percussionist Evelyn Glennie, who is nearly deaf.
Touch the Sound
Himself
A documentary which explores the connections among sound, rhythm, time, and the body by following percussionist Evelyn Glennie, who is nearly deaf.
Gambling, Gods and LSD
Original Music Composer
Filmmaker Peter Mettler embarks on a mission that takes him around the world. He is determined to record the diverse modes of transcendence that people in different cultures adopt in order to live life to the fullest. As he traverses civilization and wilderness and encounters a range of lifestyles and ideas, the filmmaker's mind-expanding trip around the world grows into a poem of images and sounds, reflecting the fragmented but alluring worlds it attempts to capture.
Fragments d'ici
Music
Johann le Guillerm, the tightrope walker who had become one of the main characters in Middle of the Moment, decided to found a new circus and called it “Cirque Ici.” In the fall of 1997, we visited him on the first European tour of his solo circus performance and shot with him for three days and nights.
A Bookshelf on Top of the Sky: 12 Stories About John Zorn
Himself
Claudia Heuermann's A Bookshelf On Top of the Sky gives us a rare peek into the working methods of one of the most notorious and reclusive composers on the scene today. Filmed over a ten year period, this documentary includes live footage of Masada, Naked City, Cobra, as well as improvisations, his classical work and rare interviews. A prize winner at European festivals, this film documents Heuermann's very personal, fifteen year odyssey with the music of John Zorn. At times frightening, at times hilarious, at times frighteningly hilarious.
Rivers and Tides
Original Music Composer
Portrait of Andy Goldsworthy, an artist whose specialty is ephemeral sculptures made from elements of nature.
The Tango Lesson
Original Music Composer
On a trip to Paris Sally meets Pablo, a tango dancer. He starts teaching her to dance then she returns to London to work on some "projects". She visits Buenos Aires and learns more from Pablo's friends. Sally and Pablo meet again but this time their relationship changes, she realises they want different things from each other. On a trip to Buenos Aires they cement their friendship.
Middle of the Moment
Original Music Composer
Filmmakers Nicolaus Humbert and Werner Penzel examine the nature of nomadic existence in this documentary, from the literal nomads of North Africa to the more metaphorical kind of wanderer, such as American poet and ex-pat Robert Lax. Humbert and Penzel focus especially on the nomad's paradoxical ability to fully inhabit every moment while remaining coolly detached from specific locales and anxious thoughts about the past or future.
Antes do Amanhecer
Original Music Composer
Jesse (Ethan Hawke), um jovem americano, e Celine (Julie Delpy), uma estudante francesa, se encontram casualmente no trem para Viena e logo começam a conversar. Ele a convence a desembarcar em Viena e gradativamente vão se envolvendo em uma paixão crescente. Mas existe uma verdade inevitável: no dia seguinte ela irá para Paris e ele voltará ao Estados Unidos. Com isso, resta aos dois apaixonados aproveitar o máximo o pouco tempo que lhes resta.
Little Lieutenant
Musician
Little Lieutenant is a look back at the late Weimar era with its struggles and celebrations leading up to world war, a period piece. Scored to John Zorn's arrangement of the Kurt Weill song, "Little Lieutenant of the Loving God", and drawing its imagery both from the original song and its somewhat idiosyncratic rearrangement, the film presents an internal reading of Silvers' solo scored to the same musical piece, "Along the Skid Mark of Recorded History".
Orlando - A Mulher Imortal
Additional Music
O nobre Orlando é condenado pela rainha Elizabeth I a permanecer eternamente jovem. A maldição se cumpre e Orlando atravessa os séculos experimentando vidas, parceiros, sentimentos e mudanças de gênero.
Thea und Nat
Original Music Composer
Eastern Cross
Original Music Composer
OSTKREUZ tells the episodic story of 15-year-old Elfie, who literally and metaphorically inhabits a no-man’s-land between the two Germanies shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The film deploys a neorealist aesthetic to reinforce the difficulties confronting the girl, and by inference, Germany.
Step Across the Border
Music
An avant-garde documentary film on English guitarist, composer and improviser Fred Frith.
Step Across the Border
Self
An avant-garde documentary film on English guitarist, composer and improviser Fred Frith.
The Top of His Head
Original Music Composer
Satellite dish salesman Gus (Stephen Ouimette) experiences some life-altering changes when he meets performance artist Lucy (Christie MacFadyen) in this visually poetic fantasy. After Lucy vanishes, leaving a puzzling note, Gus goes on a quest for the mysterious woman. Moving from his meticulous life in a technologically advanced world into the spontaneity of nature, Gus learns some important lessons and begins to trust his own instincts.
Wolfsgrub - Portrait of My Mother
Original Music Composer
In this film, Humbert is on the trail of his own history. Wolfsgrub is the name of the house where Humbert's mother lives, and though she is getting on in years, she becomes young again as she answers her son's questions. Humbert allows his mother the space and time to tell her story, portraying he everyday life through the use of concentrated images. From the bits and pieces of these narrative fragments, a stunning portrait of a freethinking woman emerges.