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Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

New Mexico's widescreen roving folk duo A Hawk and A Hacksaw (accordionist/drummer Jeremy Barnes and violinist Heather Trost) present a brand new live re-score of Soviet director Sergei Parajanov's classic film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. The idea is not to accompany a silent film but to work with the existing dialogue and score to create a new blend of live music and pre-recorded sound that accompanies, comments on, and sometimes overtakes the original soundtrack and dialogue. The border between live instrumentation and film score becomes blurred, just as Parajanov's film masks the boundaries between realism and magic. Read more …

Set high up in the Carpathian mountains, the film tells the age-old tale of a peasant's love and loss in a pre-industrial age where magic and ritual are as much a part of existence as back-breaking work and violent family feuds. The colour, grandeur and gut-wrenching romance of A Hawk and A Hacksaw's music is the perfect counterpoint to Parajanov's visionary blend of folklore, sorcery and religious symbolism.

More information on this production is available at www.ahawkandahacksaw.net.

The critical consensus

Sergei Parajanov’s 1965 classic reminds us to honour the modes of culture which have given us subject matter and material to make films on, and calls for us to appreciate the hidden customs which govern many societies today.

****(*)Andrew, TV Bomb, 28/02/2012

Where and when?

Edinburgh Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Sunday March 4, 2012. More info: www.filmhousecinema.com

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