Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen

Music is a monster (DVD)

In this portrait film by Jytte Rex the composer Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen describes music – good-humouredly but also seriously – as an omnivorous monster, a demon that controls him. The film refers back to Gudmundsen-Holmgreen's first source of inspiration, the Irish-French dramatist Samuel Beckett, whose linguistic universe he has translated into music. The film culminates with a Hans Christian Andersen suite, Moving Still, which he has written for the world-famous string ensemble The Kronos Quartet, where Gudmundsen-Holmgreen for example gives Andersen's song In Denmark I was Born an Arabic adaptation as a tribute to our new fellow-citizens.

Of Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen the film-maker Jytte Rex says: “He has a formidable ability to put words to his obsession with a wordless art. There is both simple physicality and an unbridled wildness in his music.”

This film about the nature of music is the third part of an art trilogy that also includes the spoken-art film Inger Christensen - The Cicadas Exist and the visual-art film Palle Nielsen - I Shall Not Want.

Region Code: 2 (Europe)