Mica Levi with Curl @ Videodroom 2019

After a successful 2018 edition, the Vooruit and Film Fest Gent will be collaborating closely again for ten days. All throughout the festival, VIDEODROOM will take place in the Vooruit. Viewers can expect to see a series of concerts during which prominent musicians, oscillating between various genres, will be playing new film compositions live. These will be reinterpreting existing or completely new partitions and unique improvisations.

A new very promising name, CURL, is a collective operating in London with the trio Brother May, Coby Sey and Mica Levi - known as Micachu - in command. This gem of the London Underground will play live during their short film, Mayonnaise, Corn on the Cob and My Car. Levi is known for her work with the band The Shapes (now Good Sad Happy Happy Bad) and soundtracks for Under the Skin (2013) and Jackie (2016), both shown at Film Fest Gent in 2016. For the soundtrack of this latter film, she was the first woman to be nominated for an Oscar in nearly 20 years.

Dutch minimalist composer Jozef Van Wissem will make an appearance too. He has been collaborating with director Jim Jarmusch ('Stranger Than Paradise' (1984), 'Down By Law' (1986) and 'Broken Flowers' (2005)), released four albums and won a Cannes Soundtrack Award for the soundrack of Jarmusch’s 'Only Lovers Left Alive' (2013). During this new edition of VIDEODROOM, Van Wissem will be presenting his last project to the festival: a live partition to the splendid silent film 'The Dying Swan' (1917) by Russian director Evgueni Bauer.

Eventually, on VIDEODROOM, Camae Ayewa, known as Moor Mother, will be presenting her new project for a Belgian première: 'The Great Bailout', which is a vivid plea in which performance and projection are inextricably linked and for which she called upon the London Contemporary Orchestra, who gave colours to - among others - prominent films like 'There Will Be Blood' (2007) and 'Phantom Thread' (2017) by Paul Thomas Anderson.

On top of the afore-mentioned films, 'Alien' (the 40-year old legendary science-fiction classic) and 'Salomé' (the filmed adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s controversial eponymous play) will be put to music during VIDEODROOM.