The Unfilmables is a new project which invites musicians to create soundtracks for films that don’t exist and the first contributors are Mica Levi, alongside her sister Francesca, and Wrangler.
They will both take part in a pilot tour for the project this May and June which will travel across three venues, with each act contributing a circa 40-minute composition each. Mica Levi is of course no stranger to soundtracking work having notably contributed musical accompaniment to films such as Under The Skin and Jackie, but this project will certainly see a difference as she provides the soundtrack to an imaginary film.
The ‘films’ chosen by the artists for their soundtrack will be based on research into abandoned film projects conducted by the teams at HOME and CineCity Brighton, who are partnering with LiveCinema, the creators of the project.
Wrangler’s film is The Tourist, a sci-fi script telling the story of a sex-charged alien underworld in Manhattan, which had attracted the attention of Francis Ford Coppola, but ultimately didn’t make it past initial production. "The idea of ‘imagining’ a film that has never actually been made is fascinating if a bit daunting," says Wrangler’s Stephen Mallinder. It was always going to be a sci-fi film I think as it lent itself to our live ‘electronic’ sound. It’s not an attempt to make the film but rather abstract the ideas behind it – to reduce the original design and story to a series of visual and sonic cyphers – an alien lost amongst us.
Mica and Francesca Levi’s film is The Colour Of Chips, which is based on Armenian filmmaker Sergei Parajanov’s The Colour Of Pomegranates. This new version reinterprets the film for a North of England setting. "I was thinking of utilising the everyday rituals of modern urban life in the UK and using the tableaux technique deployed by Parajanov," says Francesca Levi. "I am always interested in the extraordinary in the ordinary."
The performances will take place at Manchester’s HOME on May 6, Duke Of York’s Picturehouse in Brighton on May 14 and London’s BFI Southbank on June 9. You can find more information and get tickets here.
