12. V:NM Festival premieres Tea Grahek’s debut music documentary Improcon – Heartful of Music on the opening day of the Austrian festival presenting improvised music on 29 May in Graz. The screening is taking place at Schaumbad – Freies Atelierhaus at 2 pm, followed by afternoon and evening concerts at Esc Medien Kunst Labor, Forum Stadtpark and Stockwerkjazz with Nina Polaschegg and Judith Unterpertinger; the trio of Lotte Anker, Elisabeth Harnik and Reinhard Ziegerhofer; Annette Giesriegl, Alfred Lang, Werner Zangerle and Patrick Wurzwallner – among many others.
The film had two work-in-progress pre-premieres previously at Improcon 2018 – Graz Edition last May, and at Improcon 2018 – 4th Congress Of Free Improvised Music, Arts & Thoughts in August at Veliki Tabor Castle in Desinić, Croatia, but since then the documentary reached its final form, got completed with English subtitles and ready to meet the reactions of the jury and audience at various regional film festivals and later worldwide. After the V:NM Festival premiere, Tea Grahek’s work will be applied to Dok’n’Ritam Festival in Serbia, DORF Film Festival in Croatia, DOKUDOC in Slovenia, Mediawave in Hungary, and later this year will be screened in Australia. We have briefly talked with Tea Grahek about her documentary debut.
“The project was definitely a learning process, I can even call it a playground with lots of experiments: how to make a video documentation on such a huge event with minimal equipment. It was also a privilage to meet, work with, listen to and film so many great artists from different parts of the world. The first idea was to make a short fundraising campaign clip for the festival, but after collecting all recorded materials on more than 40 different sessions, 14 interviews with participting artists, plus all the cutaway shots, I realized that the end result will be defintely much bigger and much more complex than just a short clip that calls out for crowdfunding”, explains Tea Grahek.
“The whole idea of Improcon, the participating artists, filming and later the post-production influenced and inspired me how to make a documentary about improvisation. By improvisation. Everything that doesn’t really vibrate to you, is useless. Even though the picture looks nice or the music sounds great, if it doesn’t serve the final result, should not be used. However painful it is, most of the material won’t make it to the final version of the movie”, says the filmmaker.
The 52-minute film is an intimate and documentary-style visual story on Improcon 2017, about improvised music in general, and a certain vision of free-thinking. It features interviews and ad-hoc sessions by the festival’s participating artists. In 2017 the workshop festival hosted more than 70 artists from 18 countries, and had been organized by Slovenian associations KUD Mreža from Ljubljana and Klub Metulj – Youth Centre Bistrica ob Sotli from Bistrica ob Sotli with Croatian association Gokul from Zabok, partnered by two Austrian organizations: Schaumbad – Freies Atelierhaus from Graz, and Šopron Shuffle – Trans European Music Meetings from Vienna.
Improcon – Heartful of Music has a 30-second teaser trailer out today which will be followed by a second teaser trailer in two weeks. The short teasers will be followed by a longer trailer in late-April.
