Michael Nyman considers himself to be not only a composer but a filmmaker, too – it is his express intention to reveal this side as well to the public during his stay in Budapest. There is no doubt that his success was founded on The Piano, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe in the category best original film music in 1994. He considers the fact that his name is closely associated with the films of Peter Greenaway to be both a blessing and a curse. He also has an extremely interesting story about how he ended up in Budapest in 1965 quite by chance.
Speaker: Michael Nyman
Host: Michael Loebenstein
Date: 16.30-18.00 Tuesday 10 September 2019
Venue: Uránia National Film Theatre (1088 Budapest, Rákóczi út 21.)
The programme is the result of collaboration between the Budapest Classics Film Marathon and the Hungarian National Film Fund – Fast Forward Programme.
After the presentation, there will be a screening of The Piano from 18.30 in Uránia National Film Theatre, as part of the Budapest Classics Film Marathon.
Michael Nyman
The British artist is without doubt one of the most popular and most daringly experimental composers of our age. His genre covers works written for his own ensemble to compositions penned for symphony orchestras, choirs and string quartets, in addition to which he is active as a conductor, pianist, writer, film director, music historian and photographer. Film fans know him primarily as the composer of music for The Piano and as a permanent collaborator with Peter Greenaway, an artist who has created the music for the director’s vision in numerous works from The Draftsman’s Contract through Prospero’s Books to The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. Furthermore, Michael Winterbottom’s Wonderland and Gattaca conquered the world with his scores. Most recently, he has written music for silent films of the late 1920s and he has also experimented as an independent filmmaker.
Michael Loebenstein
Director of the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna and secretary general of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF). He founded the Research and Education Department of the Film Museum, which he also headed between 2004-2011, and later on he directed the National Film and Sound Archive in Australia until 2016. Since the late 1990s he has worked as researcher and curator in various areas of film archiving, film history, digital culture and heritage. As a journalist, editor and author he is also a leading figure of contemporary film history and film criticism.