Moses and Aaron(Moses und Aron)

An adaptation of an opera featuring live-recorded singers, local peasants and their livestock at a sunbaked Roman amphitheatre, Moses and Aaron was perhaps as challenging to Huillet-Straub as the Exodus. Revolving around an inarticulate prophet’s struggle with a sibling who could (and would) compromise the most sanctimonious of divine messages to the demands of the masses, Arnold Schönberg’s opera was revitalised by two filmmakers who readily empathised with the modernist composer’s struggle in connecting his art with the world. Bolstered by Huillet’s precise splicing of Straub’s trademark pans and tableaux-like shots, this is a film in which nature meets culture, ethics blends in with aesthetics, and the purity of artistic thought and the power of the visual image exist in impeccable harmony.

19/10 (Sat): Seminar with Clarence Tsui and Derek Lam