Dr. Frankens-Tone

Dr. Frankens-Tone

A project for a sound-imageless cinema

For the Cinemateket USF Bergen, 2005

skrekkefilm KinematUSF MR

USF Cinemateket, Bergen Filmklubb
Program 05 Nr.2 2005, p.142

Foreword

An empty cinema is a dark, silent hall.
We all have childhood memories of dark, fairy spaces inhabited by frightful, disquieting presences: strange voices, speaking incomprehensible things in abnormal languages. And these memories mix with remembrances of amusing situations; often the line between fear and fairy fun, frightening and funny is really very thin.

The Mel Brooks film Young Frankenstein - in italian spoken version Frankenstein Junior - is a cult movie for me. I have seen the movie over and over again, but it is the voices I remember most of all; it would be difficult to imagine all those crazy amusing situations with other voices and words …

What an abnormal situation!

Only a few years ago it happened: I have seen the movie English spoken, and it was really fanciful and hilariously funny to listen to the original track.

Whatsmore, the sounds (voices, but also music, noises) of this and any other well-known movie carry images inside themselves; in a similar way we can see a face in a telephone voice, if we know the person speaking.

The project

The setting: an empty cinema, a dark room; an endless score of fragments coming from different loudspeakers, a cut and paste of the soundtracks of "Young Frankenstein" in different languages,

The result: a monster created by assembling organic, living parts of many creatures, and the beginning of a new life.

Close your eyes and imagine.

Does it make you laugh? cry? fear? recognise? remember?

G.G. Bergen, August 25, 2005

click here for a few sample in a different languages:

schwIT.mp3