Mountain & Maiden, directed by Shmuel Hoffman and Anton von Heiseler, is a film about Aaspiya’s seemingly carefree childhood exposed to the disastrous effects of unbridled consumption and advancing globalisation. The music, composed by Sarah Nemtsov, uses keyboard, amplified piano and voice to reflect her struggle with her own helplessness in the face of what the work is really about.
The documentary presents the life of ten-year-old Aaspiya from New Delhi. The girl seems happy, deeply absorbed in her own thoughts and dreams, but we notice that she lives in the immediate vicinity of a huge landfill, where, instead of going to school, she spends her days collecting waste. The next frames show the flickering of poisonous fumes rising from the mountain of garbage. Aaspiya lives in this destructive, toxic environment without any protection – just like everyone else living in the area. Mountain & Maiden is about the consequences of unbridled consumption and exploitative child labour, as well as the deadly effects of globalisation. The scenes in the film, although they seem distant, in reality take place very close to us – Europe, too, exports huge amounts of waste to landfills like the one in New Delhi. Despite its gloomy setting, the documentary is also a story about the human desire for happiness and determination in striving to live a quality life in spite of depressing circumstances.
Sarah Nemtsov wrote music for this film referring to the tradition of accompaniment in silent cinematography from a hundred years ago. Yet she also uses contemporary means of expression. In Mountain & Maiden, you can hear not only the piano part, but also bands of sounds partially distorted, masked and supplemented by various samples with sounds of the audiosphere of the waste disposal site: the noise of trucks, people talking or birds chirping. In addition, the artist used fragments of conversations with Aaspiyia, wanting to mark the material with her presence. All these sound elements are generated during the performance using several keyboards by Małgorzata Walentynowicz, who creates live music for this 21st-century silent film.
Concert cofinanced from the Creative Promotion Fund of Society of Authors ZAiKS
