Philip Glass Philip Glass Ensemble

PETER GREENAWAY
THE MAN IN THE BATH (2001) 10 minutes
Filmed in an 18th Century Plague Hospice in Milan, Italy, “The Man in the Bath” is an exploration of space, time, sequence, continuity, classification and order.  Set in 1939, its central hero is a man imprisoned in a bathroom condemned to endure hot and cold-water tortures.  Mirroring the ordering and re-ordering of the prisoner’s mind, the film was shot on fourteen cameras and edited to accommodate ideas of cutting and pasting, sorting and cataloguing, framing and reframing, a process long held to be a fascination and characteristic of the music of Philip Glass.

SHIRIN NESHAT    
PASSAGE (2001) 11 1/2 minutes
Shot in Morocco, the film evokes the journey of life from birth to death and rebirth. One of Neshat’s most universal works, Passage is a story of loss, mourning and renewal.

“From early on as I was conceptualizing Passage, I envisioned the film as a visual poem that could symbolically tell a universal story of human loss, grief, renewal and hope in the face of existential wondering.  Philip Glass’s music accompanies this narrative masterfully to reach the audience on a visceral level and convey the film’s message.  His music bonds with the images so intimately creating an experience that moves beyond cultural specificity to meet at a common ground where human soul and predicament knows no boundaries.  My collaboration with Philip was precisely the discovery of this common ground.” —Shirin Neshat

ATOM EGOYAN 
DIASPORA (2001) 8 minutes
The techniques used in DIASPORA are all optical and physically processed.  There are no digital or computer effects.  This "handmade" characteristic gives the film it particular quality.

“Philip Glass’s composition powerfully conveys the contrasting emotional threads of cohesion, dispersal, and resettlement involved in the process of diaspora. His riveting score beautifully enhances the volatile nature of the image.  The project was an inspiring collaboration and I’m thrilled with the results.” —Atom Egoyan

GODFREY REGGIO
EVIDENCE  (1995) 8 minutes
This film short by Godfrey Reggio looks into the eyes of children watching television.  Though engaged in a daily routine, watching Disney’s Dumbo, they appear drugged or mentally disabled not unlike the patients in a psychiatric hospital.  EVIDENCE aims to enliven the discussion of the spiritual and social consequences of the medium of television and the effects of a technology that has been accepted without question.

MICHAL ROVNER
NOTES (2001) 12 minutes
Michal Rovner’s “Notes” explores the notion of music as it relates to the human condition. Shot on video in Transylvania and Russia, human figures in snow become an abstract visual representation of musical notes on the page.

“When Philip Glass said that he was going to look at the film and, inspired by it, would write the music, I decided to play with the idea of writing notes and started with five lines on my video note-book. Instead of giving Philip a final work, I asked him if he would like to watch the work while it was in progress. There began our fruitful dialogue.” —Michal Rovner

GODFREY REGGIO 
ANIMA MUNDI (1992) 27 minutes
ANIMA MUNDI is a poetic combination of music and images designed to celebrate biological diversity.  Referring to an ancient mythological concept of the interrelationships of nature’s forms, ANIMA MUNDI illustrates unity in nature, its wholeness despite its variety.  A collage of footage from the African grasslands, to Amazon jungles, to microscopic colonies, to underwater coral reefs, ANIMA MUNDI creates an affinity between the extremely complex and the extremely simple and aims to link all creatures to the spirit and soul of the world.