Half the Heart ∙ Hälfte des Herzens, a music film

A music film with a soprano, a deaf Angel, a worker, 2 horses and a Central Station.
A bride running in deep despair along the industrial waterside of a river, when a deaf angel arises. A workman discovers miracles during his daily duty of dumping garbage. A song being born out of a metropolitan navel into realms of the soul.

Festival screenings: Festival International du Film Aubagne, 2012
Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2013, Beethoven Fest Bonn 2013, International TV Forum Music „The look of the sound“ 2013, ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival Berlin 2014

with: Lisa Tjalve (Bride, soprano), Heidrun Barth (Half the Angel, deaf), Simone Leona Hueber (Bride’s Sister), Jan Gerdes (Worker, pianist) and Hans-Georg Bachmann (his colleague)

Music: Sidney Corbett https://www.sidneycorbett.com/de/
Director and Editor - Andreas Rochholl https://www.zeitgenoessische-oper.de/andreas_rochholl
Director of Photography - Philipp Grieß http://www.philipp-griess.com/
Sound Director - Daniel Weingarten
Color Grading - Stefan Reiss
Make-up Artist - Christiane Buchholz
Costume - Sabine Gallei
Set Photographer - Erik-Jan Ouwerkerk
Consigliere - Susanna Poldauf
Camera Assistant and Gaffer - Gregor Reinbold
Horse Master - Jörn Evers, Dagmar Usadel

Sidney Corbett’s composition is taken from his song cycle „Lieder aus der Bettlerschale“ (1998) for Soprano and Piano, after a poem by Christine Lavant (1915-1973)

In Half the Heart cutting-edge sound design techniques was applied by recording and mixing both on-location sounds and studio recordings. The idea was to extend the relationship between the visual and acoustic spaces and to blur and oscillate the boundaries in-between. How does it sound e.g., when a melody is just in your mind, not yet on the lips – the moment before it is materialized as an acoustic expression?
In order to transfer the song to the structure of a filmic, the music itself went through a transformation process during the production. The musicians, who perform as actors in the film, found new forms fusing sounds arising from their acting with the musical material of the composition, thus extending the range of their interpretation and their improvisational skills

Info: https://www.zeitgenoessische-oper.de/produktionen/half-the-heart
with Support from DB Station & Service AG and DB Services GmbH