MEMORY! Music&Cinema

In the frame of a cine-concert, a live performance for a silent film, major title Film Heritage comprises silent films… For the programming, that means that either there is a recorded soundtrack either there is a live performance on stage during the screening.

The idea is to create awareness about the screening of such films, by performing a live accompaniment, as it was the case at the early age of cinema. But this would be revamped with new instruments, new composition…

Among the MEMORY Festival objectives are this educational dimension. A recognized music composer, as a Guest Artist, will educate and coach some young Cambodian musicians during a few weeks before the festival and who will finally perform on stage.

This personality has to guide those musicians to compose this soundtrack for a live performance during MEMORY 2nd edition in June 2014 and further on create motivation for the discipline of film composer.

In 2014, famous Cambodian compositor, Him Sophy, has kindly accepted to participate in a music composition for films course aimed at 9 young musicians.

They gave a stage performance during the Closing Ceremony on June 8 at Chaktomuk Theater. The film was The extraordinary Adventures of Mr West in the Land of the Bolcheviks (1924) by Lev Koulechov.

Him Sophy and his musicians - Rehearsal of the cine-concert at Chaktomuk Theater

Him Sophy

Him Sophy is a Cambodian composer whose music is a testament to will to overcome great difficulties for the sake of his art.  His early years of piano study  (1970 to 1975), were interrupted  when the Khmer Rouge civil war broke out and it was not until the fall of the regime that Sophy was able to resume his music studies in 1981. In 1985, he received a scholarship to study music composition in Moscow, Russia, and spent the next  14 years there, obtaining a PhD in Composition in 1998. Sophy’s  major works include Memory From Darkness which he wrote in 1990, inspired by his own life and the atrocities he witnessed during the Khmer Rouge era. The world premiere of Memory From Darkness will be performed by the internationally renowned New York New Music Ensemble this July 3rd at 7pm, at the Intercontinental Phnom Penh, as part of Cambodian Living Arts’ Cambodian-American Friendship series of concerts. This piece will also be recorded and published as an album by Cambodia Living Arts.