Cinema Concerts: Alberta Balsam and DJ Overdose

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Tickets

Location: AVL Mundo

Doors open from 20:00, film starts at 21:45

Regular ticket € 12,50

Discount with Rotterdampas € 6,25 / Cineville  € 7,50 / CJP € 10,00

Bring your e-ticket / printed ticket

If you bought a ticket with discount show your discount card at the entrance

No refunds, we offer substituted screenings if we are forced to cancel the screening

Live electronic acts creating a score for shorts films, co-curated with artist from Operator and films from Go Short. These Cinema Concerts exist of two performances. 

Alberta Balsam scores socio-critical sci fi Third Kind (30 min)

Local synth and breaks heroine Alberta Balsam will perform a live score at the Cinema Concerts. Her sound is heavily rooted in IDM, experimental acid, pounding techno, and electro. Alberta’s music is experimental, but still surprisingly accessible. To offset her heavy and dark beats, she uses spacious and wide synths and snippets of vocals, which are often heavily processed. 
Alberta Balsam’s name is derived from a track by Aphex twin, she is inspired by him and other artists like Clark, Lakker, and Four Tet. When Alberta visualizes her musical world in her head, she mainly sees alienating sci-fi and dystopian realms. Therefore the short sci-fi film Third Kind is the perfect match for her. Alberta says “I am someone who worries about the future of mankind”, this is something that she has in common with the director Yorgos Zois. In her music, there is a longing for nostalgia and at the same time a kind of curiosity for the future. During the lockdown, she has had the time to rediscover her passion for making music, so she is ready to show her magic at RMA.

Third Kind (2018) – Yorgos Zois, 32 min, Greece 

The earth has been abandoned by the people who could afford to do so. A mysterious signal has led three archeologists to visit an empty airport on Earth. Here the robot-like archeologists investigate the lives once lived there. On their journey you find out that Earth could not be sustainable anymore, thus some people found a way out. 
Third Kind challenges the viewer to think about our future. Is this the future that we are moving towards? Director Yorgos Zois says “Although this is a sci-fi film, all the sets and props are real”, the airport is a real evacuated refugee camp in Athens. This makes the viewer think about the important issue that is the migrant crisis. This short film is both subtle and terrifying, and because of the minimal dialogue, the perfect film for a Cinema Concert. 

DJ Overdose scores Chris Labbé dark and doomy animations ( 22 min) 

Enter the freaky soundscape of the Rotterdam-based DJ Overdose, seen by many as one of the pillars of the Dutch electro scene. He started DJ-ing in the late ’80s and producing music shortly after. His sound consists of melancholic melodies and big drums in which his love for 80s hip hop can be heard. He has a small but perfectly formed discography that includes mutant electro-funk and ghetto disco albums, as well as EPs that touch on sci-fi-tinged soundtracks and more dark and fatalistic adventures. He had output on numerous of the finest of labels such as Viewlexx, Strange Life, WT Records, and Pinkman and he worked in collaboration with greats such as Alden Tyrell, Cliff Lothar & I-F.

Overdose gets a lot of inspiration from movies and their scores when making new music. He loves the magical ambiance of old black and white films and has over 300 soundtracks in his record collection. His passion for film and soundtracks makes him the perfect candidate to score the two short films by Boris Labbé.

Orogenesis (2016) – Boris Labbé, 8 min, France 

According to Boris Labbé Orogenesis is “A trip towards abstraction, as a hypothesis on how mountains might have been formed.” While following the transformations of the landscapes, the viewer gets captivated by the visuals that remind them of the sliding of tectonic plates and the movement of magma. The film shows a mountain chain that undergoes multiple metamorphoses. This both familiar and unfamiliar visual is made with satellite imagery and 3D models from Google Earth combined with digital image processing. 

The Fall (2018) – Boris Labbé, 14 min, France

“As celestial beings descend to Earth vitiating its population, the world’s order unbalances. Initiated by these terms, a tragic fall leads to the parturition of crucial opposites: Hell and Heaven’s circles.” This is how Boris Labbé describes his short film ‘The Fall’. Made with over 3500 hand drawings in Indian ink and watercolor, this film depicts the contrast between heaven and hell. Labbé shifts between the worlds of fine art exhibition and independent animation while reaching back to the paintings of Renaissance masters like Bruegel and Bosch with a dash of the surrealist horror of Francis Bacon or Goya.

Meetsysteem
Before the Cinema Concerts we will present a video clip by the band Meetsysteem. In this short film ‘Heel Even Niets’ we follow Chef, a young, impressionable conspiracy theorist who is on his way to a mysterious cult deeply hidden in the Dutch forests. There they are preparing for the day that they have been waiting for their whole life.

A special thank you to our partners Operator and Go Short. 

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