Quietus favourite Diamanda Galas is to showcase her first major film collaboration at the Barbican Theatre’s SPILL Festival of Performance this April. Schrei 27, produced with director David Pepe "is formed of several ‘chapters’ that follow a person (played by Galas) who is taken into a mental hospital after arrest for treason and subjected to horrific psychological and physiological torture in order to extract a confession." The room will be in complete darkness before evolving into the film, with Galas’ recorded vocals in accompaniment. Schrei 27 will take place between 1 and 9pm on April 22nd and 23rd.
The definition of Schrei runs as follows: "SHRIEK: As in rape, torture, and other human experiment; the shriek of an animal which is repeatedly attacked within a confined space." Full information about what is surely set to be one of the most challenging nights of 2011 can be found below:
"Piercing, guttural screams of emotion, crescendos of raw human sound, visceral primeval calls and silence form the extended aria of pain that is Schrei 27, a film by Diamanda Galás and Davide Pepe that has its World Premiere at the Barbican’s SPILL Festival in 2011.
"Comprising several short performances or ‘chapters’ of a confession that might have been induced through a chemical or mechanical manipulation of the brain, Schrei 27 follows a person – played by both Galás and a male actor – who is taken into a mental hospital after arrest for treason. There the person is subjected to torture in order to extract a confession, which is not given. Instead of the confession comes a ‘holy’ recrimination…
"The film presents a powerful unrelenting psychological and physiological portrait of trauma caused to enemies of the state in a "medical facility" where trained doctors deliver incremental changes of shock, light, heat and cold to their "patients" in confined spaces. The piece alternates extreme high-energy vocals with absolute silence, using the unique speech and voice style that Galás has been researching and developing for the last thirty years. Abstract utterances and silence meld with passages – including from the Book of Job and St. Thomas Aquinas – about transitions between life and death, salvation and condemnation, sanity and madness."
