One Day Today Will Be Once

Director's Note:

„I wanted to immerse myself in what I found to be a fascinating, surrealistic world and discover what led the initiators of this lengthy project to commit to such an idea – investing countless hours and money, even though they themselves will never witness its outcome. Their task is both to sow the seeds and challenge future generations to perpetuate this monumental task. My task as a filmmaker was to explore whether such a Grand Idea might hold the key to a self-determined life, decelerating time beyond the pressures of ticking clocks and deadlines.”

Mentor's Note:

The comical absurdity of the incommensurate elements was something I immediately loved about in Anca's project. John Cage's Organ2/ASLSP is a composition which is played so slowly that no human being will ever be fully able to listen to it. Still the maintenance of the art piece is in the hands of mortal human beings. There is Tati-like comedy in the image of a church in a small village where tourists try to grasp the meaning of his piece of art and and there´s always comedy in things which are taken very, very seriously!

(Susanna Helke/ Finland/ USA, Filmmaker)

Production Notes:

Author / Director	Anca Miruna Lazarescu
Producer	Stefan Kloos / Kloos & Co. Medien GmbH
Camera	Tobias Tempel, Tanja Häring
Sound recordist	Friedrich Wohlfarth, Johannes Schmelzer-Ziringer
Editor	Uwe Wrobel
Sound design	Friedrich Wohlfarth
Composer	Friedrich Wohlfarth
Line producer	Caroline Kirberg
Running time	27:47
Shooting format	XDCAM HD
Screening format	35 mm
Sound format	Dolby Digital 5.1

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Short Synopsis:

In a small church in Halberstadt, in the former East Germany, a pipe organ plays avant-garde composer John Cage’s „Organ2/ASLSP“ (Organ squared/As SLow aS Possible) a single note at a time – and will do so without interruption until the year 2640, resulting in a 639-year long concert. A film bursting with moving as well as humorous moments – attuned to the question of humanity’s perception of time

Long Synopsis:

Imagine a small church in Halberstadt (in the former East Germany), where an organ plays just one single note a day – 24 hours without any interruption. It takes months, sometimes years, until the progression to the next note. The performance of the composition, „Organ2/ASLSP“ by John Cage, a pioneer of 20th century avant-garde music, began in the year 2000. The performance will last 639 years, while the composition is played “As SLow As Possible”. It promises to be the longest concert of all times and explores new dimensions of time and sound. A society based in Halberstadt that initiated the project expends a lot of time and passion on it. The members meet four times a year to discuss whether, and if so how, they can inspire their descendants to continue the project, as well as what will happen at the close of the year 2639, when the performance ends. Will the GEMA musical performance rights society charge royalties? How will the organizers guarantee funding for a genuinely “permanent” organ to replace the existing „interim” one? Even though the organ has only six pipes, what will happen when it comes time to play a seventh note in February 2009?

Although the honorary members of the John Cage organ project all have daily routines and professional and social commitments elsewhere, this project represents for them an island of deceleration, a kind of free space in which to confront their own attitudes toward time. What makes it so fascinating to these people to implement an idea whose outcome they will never live to see? What draws hundreds of “pilgrims” to Halberstadt as witnesses, every time the organ emits a new note – ordinarily, an unspectacular event?

The filmmaker launches an expedition to explore the humorous, but also the deeper philosophical aspects of the John Cage organ project. For her, the “discovery of slowness“ also means uncovering the various strategies human beings use to conceptualize time. In doing so, she is concerned about the term of “time”, its meaning and how we cope with it: What does time mean? Can it be altered? And are we really in a position to decelerate life?

Anca Miruna Lazarescu:

born in 1979 in Timisoara, Romania. In 1990 emigration to Germany. Since 2000 she studies Studies at the “German Academy for Film and Television” in Munich, (Documentary and TV-Journalism Department). She accomplished several documentary films, such as „The Secret of Deva“, which attracted international interest and received the award for the Best Newcomer Film in Germany 2007. In 2005 she realized the film „Salma - Beneath Two Skies“, a portrait about an arabic girl, living in Israel for the TV channel 3sat. Her film „Bucuresti – Berlin“ has been nominated for the Berlin Today Award of the Berlinale in 2005.

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Uwe Wrobel:

Astallerstrasse 25, 80339 München
mobil + 49 177 42 45 419
wrobel@playtimefilm.de
www.playtimefilm.de

Born in 1971, he works as a director for documentary and feature films and as an editor.

He is tutor for postproduction at the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film Munich (HFF Munich) and at the Bayerischen Akademie für Fernsehen (Bavarian TVAcademy)

1995-1997 education as editor for film and television at Norddeutschen Rundfunk in Hamburg, that followed studies at the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film in Munich (HFF Munich). 2004 Diploma as „director for film and television“.

Director of Imagefilms, documentary films and TV-features (WDR, Pro7, ARD). Editor of documentations, short films for TV-magazines, Image- and Industryfilms and short feature films.

General Manager of Playtime-filmproduction in Munich. Apple Certified Final Cut Pro Trainer.

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