The
musical legacy of late cultural icon Paul Bowles has been
rediscovered by first time director Owsley Brown. The result
is Night Waltz: The Music Of Paul Bowles,
a soaring tribute to the artist's unique voice, screening
in the Panorama.
"I
was particularly inspired by his writing, and that led to
discovering the music," says Brown who began the project
while studying film at night school. With the help of Bowles'
long-time friend and Tangiers neighbour Phillip Ramey, Owsley
approached the octogenarian artist.
"He
liked the idea immediately and became very much involved
in the process," says Brown. "He was very much concerned
about which recordings were picked and how the music would
be
depicted in the film. I had to sign a contract that I
would never use the music simply as background during
voiceovers."
Though
Bowles is more famous for his novel "The Sheltering
Sky", he was very active as a composer in the 1930s
and 1940s. He studied under Aaron Copland, composed music
for theatre productions by Orson Welles and Tennessee
Williams, and worked with composers Virgil Thomson and
Leonard Bernstein.
Once
underway the project's success seemed pre-ordained. Pioneer
independent Rudy Burckhardt permitted three of his early
documentaries to be re-edited into sequences matching Bowles'
scores. And avant-garde film-maker Nathaniel Dorsky came
aboard as editor and cinematographer. Framing interviews
with the composer are a potpourri of Bowles' amazing and
versatile compositions set to an arresting array of old
and new footage. "I hope it offers something very different
to film-goers," says Brown.
