Residency to record music for a documentary film.

Documentary film
Aged 13 to 19, five unaccompanied minors have crossed deserts and seas, alone and without family. When they arrive in Marseille, left to their own devices, these teenagers carry with them the burning hope of a new life. The real journey has just begun...

They left without saying goodbye, sometimes risking their lives, crossing borders, seas and deserts to write their new destiny. Over 2,000 unaccompanied foreign minors arrive alone in Marseille every year. These teenagers are looking for a place to belong. And yet they are invisible to us. 



The particularity of the use of sound in this film lies in the close link between musical composition and sound design. In this film, the boundaries between sound effects and music are blurred to create a sensory and psychological expressiveness that reflects the psyche of these edgy teenagers. In this way, sound becomes an actor in the film, acting as a bridge between inner and outer worlds. 

The musical work is described as electroacoustic, in the sense that we sometimes use everyday sounds to the point of diverting them and turning them into music. The melodic theme will run throughout the film, and will appear in different forms to illustrate the confrontation of clashing realities: symphony orchestra, electronic urban music...

The symphony orchestra is swallowed up by the electronic machine in a contamination of timbres combining the language of contemporary music with gltichs, noise, fieldrecordings... 

The writing will oscillate between a tonal, modal and atonal language. Just as the sound design of everyday life will be transformed into a singing line, so the instruments of the orchestra will be transformed into sound matter.

The theme is built on a modal scale: a junction between Western culture and the teenagers' origins. At times, the theme will be imbued with a frenetic rhythm, the jubilant nervousness of these teenagers with their senses on the alert. Then, the theme becomes more suspended, like the migrants' forced waiting, with hope always in the distance.

The theme will reflect in its mirror all the psychological, emotional and contradictory nuances that every teenager goes through.

Mentions
Biography(s)
CARGO KIDS
Thomas Ellis
Residence
Tue. 3 -- Sat. 7 September 2024
Fri. September 13, 2024 | 09h00
Distribution
Thomas Ellis
director

Jeanne Susin
composer

Oleg Ossina
sound design composer

Marseille Opera Philharmonic Orchestra
orchestra

Léo Margue
conductor

Virginie Lefebvre
sound engineer recording music

Someci - Unité
Antoine Pezet
Caroline Nataf

production