Film score combines talents of Literary Translation Studies PhD student and NZSM graduate
A classic silent film was brought to life at the New Zealand International Film Festival (NZIFF) earlier this month thanks to the combined talents of Johannes Contag, a Victoria PhD student in Literary Translation Studies, and Karlo Margetić, graduate of Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music (NZSM).
Well known in the Wellington music scene, Johannes was commissioned by the NZIFF and the Goethe-Institut to pen a chamber orchestra score for the recently restored version of EA Dupont’s 1925 silent film Variety about a troupe of trapeze artists in interwar Berlin. This was his second silent film score following The Crowd (1929), which premiered at the NZIFF in 2013.
The world premiere of Johannes’ score was performed by Wellington’s SMP Ensemble, conducted by Karlo. Karlo has degrees in composition and clarinet from the NZSM and is currently Composer in Residence with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.
Johannes has recently embarked on a PhD in Literary Translation Studies in the School of Languages and Cultures. The centrepiece of his research project will be a new translation of the short stories of early 19th-century writer Heinrich von Kleist. Johannes’s aim is to restore Kleist’s syntactic idiosyncrasies for English-language readers.
For further details, see the NZIFF website.