Eiko Ishibashi x Laura Citarella
Trenque Lauquen
© Seiji ShibuyaEiko Ishibashi
Eiko Ishibashi is a Japanese multi-instrumentalist whose work has ranged from acclaimed singer-songwriter albums to scores for film, television, theater and exhibitions to improvised music. Music dominates the life of Ishibashi, born 29 July 1974 in Mobara, but she admits to being a huge cinephile. In her youth, she studied piano but actually wanted to shoot films. She ended up being too timid for that, so she switched to music. "The only thing I could make on my own," she explains.
From an early age, she made a habit of mixing everyday sounds with music. She also uses this technique in the score of Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car, which definitively put her on the international map of film music. According to Hamaguchi, her music provides the emotional bridge between the viewer and his film. Her own records have been released by Drag City, Black Truffle, and Editions Mego, amongst others. She can also be heard on her radio residency on NTS Radio. Eiko Ishibashi won Discovery of the Year at the World Soundtrack Awards in 2022 for Drive My Car. In 2023 she returns to Ghent with new music. She has composed the score for Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's latest film, Evil Does Not Exist, which received the Silver Lion (Grand Jury Prize) at the Venice Film Festival. Moreover, she will soon tour Europe with a new project titled Gift, which involves her live performance with the screening of a film Hamaguchi created especially for this project. Gift will have its world premiere at Film Fest Gent.
Laura Citarella
Argentina's Laura Citarella is one of South America's most original film voices. Born in La Plata in 1981, she studied film direction at the Universidad del Cine in La Plata. She now teaches at that university where she leads screenwriting workshops. She writes her own scripts and also works as an actor and producer. Together with three other colleagues, she is part of the innovative production company El Pampero Ciné. According to her, however, it is more like a rock band than a production company. Although everyone has their own speciality, the foursome is enormously flexible and one can jump in for the other. This way of working has been a breath of fresh air in Argentine film production for years.
© Trenque LauquenAnd that also shines through in her own oeuvre. She debuted in 2011 with Ostende, not the city on the North Sea but the one near Buenos Aires, in which a young woman on the beach observes some bystanders. After co-directing Dog Lady, and producing the 13-hour La Flor, she moved the Laura from Ostende to her native Trenque Lauquen, also the title of the film she worked on for six years. In it, two men go in search of the missing Laura. Mystery all around, which is also a keyword Laura Citarella likes to use in connection with her work. She does not reduce her characters to one-dimensional beings. Surrounding them with mystery intrigues and makes her unconventionally shot films fascinating.
