Journeys to the Vancouver Film Festival

Sept 29, 2009 was the day I saw my first Vancouver International Film Festival film at the Pacific Cinematheque: Trimpin: The Sound of Invention, directed by Peter Esmonde, USA. Awarded the MacArthur "Genius" Award in 1997, Trimpin is an inventor, a composer, a visual and sound experimenter and a truly amazing science-artist-musician. Raised in Germany, his formative years were shaped by a collection of technical manuals belonging to his grandfather and his father's cabinet and instrument making, plus his family's support of his fascination with machines, sound and all things scientific. He took things apart to see how they worked and then put them back together again. He heard all sounds as music, a different music and one he wanted to create and develop further. He has never been represented by a gallery and no records of his have been produced. Although he has exhibited and performed widely, the grants have not come easily and in the film, he shows filing cabinets full of rejected applications. Yet he persists and his life work continues. A 'symphony' with the Kronos Quartet was a truly creative and original process with no-one being quite sure where the production was headed, since it had never been done before, and with musicians having to learn all of the newly created instruments and ways of producing sound. Many of the instruments were toys, tiny and colourful yet made to produce music, a total collaborative, symphonic performance. Roots and Branches, a complete visual and musical installation at the Experience Music Project, in Seattle, features all shapes and sizes of guitars, suspended high in the air, tuning themselves by computer. Trimpin studied at the University of Berlin and continues to explore sonic possibilities. He moved to the USA to find old instruments and machines unavailable in Europe and has been based in Seattle since the 1980's. This is a 77 minute film that inspires one to find out more and to listen more attentively to everything.