
Heaven and Earth Magic & Sonder
Director: Harry Smith, JG Thirlwell Run Time: 77 min. Format: DCP Release Year: 1962
JG Thirlwell will perform a live score to the legendary Harry Smith film Heaven and Earth Magic, a 1962 avant-garde stop-motion animation. Its surreal imagery, drawn from cutups of 19th century catalogs, has a mystical and hypnotic quality that has entranced viewers for decades.
This will be a solo performance by Thirlwell in immersive four channel sound, performed on keyboards with computer / sample programs and theremin. The score was commissioned by L’Etrange Film Festival in Paris and premiered there in 2024. This is the first performance in North America.
The evening will open with a rare screening of Thirlwell’s 11-minute film Sonder, which was commissioned by the Frekvens Film Symposium in Gotland, Sweden in 2018.