Time to focus on a worldsoundtrack-pioneer at this year’s golden Filmfest Ghent.
Already living multiple artistic lives simultaneously for quite some time, we look forward to many more decades where Dirk Brossé is conducting, composing, teaching and translating the magic of sound in film to audiences around the globe.
All of the above is combined by an extraordinary maestro and creator, communicating with the world through music🎶.
Picture Filmfest Ghent (c) Jeroen Willems 2022
Our ultimate ambassador 🇧🇪of music in film 🎞 recently added another personal highlight to his hometown festival. On Saturday October 21st, the conductor of the World Soundtrack Awards was awarded himself for his filmscore of the acclaimed documentary “Our Nature”. 🎵
The award “Best original score for a Belgian production” was won by Dirk just one day after this interview.🙌
(foto Filmfest Ghent – (c) Jeroen Willems)
Care to know more about Dirk Brossé’s creation process, highlights & first encounters with Filmfest Ghent ? His vision on our rapidly changing world? Keep reading and re-check this post shortly for more updates and 🆕 footage📷.
Flashback to 1984
AC: Congratz on the nomination! You represent one of the creative minds with lots of history at Filmfest Ghent. Can you recall your first encounter with the festival ?
Dirk Brossé: We go back to 1984. As a young professional musician, already conducting and composing, I literally knocked on the door of Jacques Dubrulle, the director of the filmfestival at the time. I asked him if the festival already had an opening tune. Which wasn’t the case.
I said to him: Why don’t you ask a young composer to write one ? Good idea, he replied, inquiring “ Do you know someone? (smiles)”
To make a long story short, we recorded the ouverture, I already had written:). And it became the official tune of the festival for many years. Since the beginning of the World Soundtrack Awards, we have a new tune, written by Elmer Bernstein, who gave it as a present to the festival.
Thanks to the focus on filmmusic, our theme became the impact of music on film.
Since that particular day, Filmfest Ghent evolved to one of the most important filmfestivals in the world.
Dirk Brossé
Rewriting the rules of cinema 🎵🎞
AC: This year, the impact of music in film goes crescendo, celebrating half a century of Filmfest Ghent with the project 25 x 2, where filmdirectors are inspired by composers.
Dirk Brossé: Exactly. To celebrate this special anniversary we wanted to do something unconventional. So we decided to ignore mainstream approaches many companies adopt, often celebrating their anniversaries in the same way.
As a cultural organisation, we were seeing things from a different angle.
And our artistic director Wim De Witte came up with this great idea💡
“To ask 25 composers to write a score, and 25 filmmakers to make a film starting from the music.”
Normally it’s completely the other way around.
AC: That’s like rewriting the rules of cinema.
Dirk: Exactly, but the result is really stunning.
https://www.filmfestival.be/en/festival/25×2
AC: ArtistCongratz already discovered the work of Juanita Onzaga, who also realizes the first VR experience at Filmfest Ghent.
Dirk Brossé: Amazing isn’t it, along with 25×2 this can pave the way for future projects.
The shortfilms, or should we say scores, can be viewed and listened to on line. They will also be projected in SMAK (Citymuseum of Actual Art in Ghent)
More iconic moments 🫶
AC: So here we are, 5️⃣0️⃣ years of awesome cinema @ Filmfest Ghent. Could you share your absolute highlights from past decades?
There are so many magnificent moments to cherish. I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to work alongside great artists, early on.
Dirk Brossé
- Those very first years, I remember conducting part of a concert, with icons like Elmer Bernstein and Georges Delerue. Later also with Angelo Badalamenti, a charming man and a great composer. We all know him because of Twin Peaks, but he wrote so much more beautiful filmmusic. (Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive…)
Another iconic moment was when we started the WSA in October 2000. Particularly the opening concert with the Brussels Philharmonic 🎵and the music by Hans Zimmer. The lifetime achievement had been given to him by Morgan Freeman. For Hans Zimmer it was the very first concert, conducting his own score, so you can imagin how memorabel this really was…We invited him back several times over the years. He is also a very gifted producer.
This was the starting point of the World Soundtrack Academy as well as The Awards. In those days we could not have imagined that 25 years later it would become a world wide organization with hundreds of members worldwide 🌎
Like the legendary Ryuichi Sakamoto, (The last Emperor, Little Buddha, The Revenant…) who was here just a few years ago. Unfortunately he passed away.
I also very much enjoyed having the Japanese composer Shigeru Umebayashi at the WSA. Working with amazing Chinese and Japanese directors, he wrote the music for 2046 and House of flying daggers (2004). I consider his guest appearance as a personal highlight. He brought a complete new sound to the festival. The sound of Asia joined European, British and American films.
Dirk Brossé
AC: Cinema with Asian influences keeps on booming. ArtistCongratz had the opportunity to discover Oscar contender “Past Lives” by the South Korean-Canadian director Celine Song. Does a busy conductor like you get the opportunity to see gems like these at the festival?
Dirk Brossé: Being part of the festivalfamily this is a bit of a frustration. With the preparation of the concert; meetings and rehearsals, unfortunately few time is left to go see the movies. Which is a shame, I know. Because I LOVE cinema and I WOULD like to see all those beautiful titles, but you can’t have it all…
AC: Another rather 🆕 element is the increased attention for music in games this edition…
Dirk Brossé: We also have an advisory board, with important representatives of the industry; managers, producers, people from ASCAP, BMI (author & composer-societies in the US) etc.
They encouraged us to do a game music concert. Which isn’t obvious. This is a whole new world for us. Videogames hold a completely different genre, with different music, different composers. While film music has to take into account the story and the dialogues among other things, games seem to leave more freedom to the composer. As far as I experienced, I feel like there is more flow.
“A.I. Is In The House”
AC: A hot topic concerning us all we would like to know your opinion about is how the rise of artificial intelligence will relate to our (creative) world in the future. Should we fear or endear A.I. ?
Dirk Brossé: It’s another technical revolution. We have had many. When we look at the history of cinema, the first amazing innovation and maybe the most important one was that they brought sound to the film in the early thirties. It changed the industry completely.
AC: But manmade none the less…
Dirk Brossé: True, but I think in general, not only in film or art but in our daily life, Artificial Intelligence is there. We cannot ignore it anymore. The question is: will it take over at some point?
I really believe that in the long run, maybe hundreds of years from now, man will have to leave the planet. Flash forward to the implosion of Earth: of course it won’t happen overnight but remember the dinosaurs also disappeared over a period of time…
Now we still are human beings and we act and think like human beings. But A.I. is not just around the corner anymore. It’s in the house.
AC: But since “A.I.” is “inspired” by what’s manmade, how to safeguard creator’s rights beyond our lifetime?
Dirk Brossé: This is a big thing indeed. All of us, in all sectors and all disciplines of art we have to think about it.
But A.I. is part of the evolution of mankind. Of course I can’t say that I’m thrilled by the idea that tomorrow a director will ask his computer to write a score instead of a composer. That would make me unhappy but at the same time a lot of things have disappeared over the course of our history. Some of us are already bionic. Wanting to evolve is part of our nature…
AC: Which brings us right back where we want to be: your winning score 🫶🌳🍀🍁🎼
The sound of Our Nature
AC: Let’s hope music and our cultural legacy will remain🤞
Dirk Brossé: Of course:)
AC: On somewhat shorter notice;), tell us about your future projects and the natural manmade creation process of your winning score :)🎶🍃🍀
Dirk Brossé: It was created during COVID. What is so special about this project is that I wrote the music without having seen the film. I just saw some rushes of the birds and few footage. The episodes are a connection of small stories. When I was asked to compose the score, they were still filming.
Actually I started composing around some keyboards 🎹 , like procreation, the beauty of nature. But also the danger…the survival of the fittest; animals literally having to kill in order to survive…
Dirk Brossé about the making of “Our Nature”
The great advantage of this collaboration was that once the music was recorded they cut the picture to the music.
At some point I had to develop a language, which I did. But due to different directors who came and went in the process, guidelines kept changing… eventually leading us to this first more abstract approach.
AC: That must have been quite stressful, but with great results.
Dirk Brossé: Indeed, in the end it’s always the result that counts. Technically, to me it was important to be able to cut or bring back in bits of the music rather easily…
AC: AC is particularly moved by how you make the birdsounds merge within the music…(The Great Trek🎶🦅)
Dirk Brossé: Yes, the sounds of the birds are actually part of the music. The music always has a flow. How to say this, I like to leave room for imagination and bring some kind of peace into people’s minds, to make them enjoy the view…
AC: and the sound 💭🎵
For the inspiring talk👩🏻💻& sound 🎼
CongratZ again ! 🙌💐
As curator of the starting point of the Belgian European presidency in 2024, Dirk is preparing this major music event which also will be broadcasted on January 6th. Looking forward to all this major international homegrown talent shining on stage in the heart of Europe. Mechelen-Malines (Belgium) for the occasion. 🫶🇪🇺
ArtistCongratz 