Film Fest Gent and Vooruit launch new festival VIDEODROOM: a 10-day unique cross-over universe, balancing between film and music

During VIDEODROOM, top musicians mix live music - from reworked scores, to unique improvisations to radical deconstructions of well-known film themes - with films, visuals and other projections. Each time it concerns unique crossover productions that you will only get to see during VIDEODROOM.

By launching VIDEODROOM Vooruit and Film Fest Gent strengthen their collaboration. During the annual Ghent film festival in October, the entire city centre is dominated by cinema. In addition to the international film competition, many avant-premieres and industry events, there is also a constant focus on film music and sound, culminating in the presentation of the World Soundtrack Awards. Together with Vooruit, Film Fest Gent is elaborating on this focus in VIDEODROOM, a full-fledged festival-in-the-festival where art on the cutting edge between music, film and visuals reigns supreme.

The first edition of VIDEODROOM starts with a live concert by ex-Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore. Moore brings a new score on guitar to four short films by the Ukrainian-American filmmaker Maya Deren. With her surreal black-and-white shorts, she was one of the most important experimental filmmakers of the 40s and 50s. Thurston Moore will perform live scores to Witch Cradle, At Land, Ritual in Transfigured Time and Deren’s magnus opus Meshes of the Afternoon.

Also included onto the varied VIDEODROOM programme:

• London rapper GAIKA presents a complete image-and-sound remix of 'Akira', the anime-cult film by Katsuhiro Otomo.
• Raveyards (Ghent based audiovisual electronica collective around Francois de Meyer and Stefan Bracke) provides an integral spectacle with GHOST: HAUNTED HOUSE. Several bands and solo artists will perform short sets in video installations, inspired by classic horror films, such as 'House on Haunted Hill' and 'The Haunting', and their accompanying soundtracks. Central guest is the self-proclaimed queer terrorist Christeene Vale, the alter ego of Texan performer Paul Soileau.
• Journalist-composer Kevin Toma (De Volkskrant) performs his new score for James Whales' 'Frankenstein', a composition on piano and synthesizer, combined with discrete samples and soundscapes.
• New York dj and producer Kilbourne will accompany the screening of vampire classic 'Blade' (a film with, 20 years before 'Black Panther', an Afro-American superhero as protagonist) with a mix of atmospheric ambient and uplifting gabberhouse.
• Swiss-Tibetan electronics producer and singer Aïsha Devi brings euphoric, deconstructed, cinematic dance music with an audiovisual projection by the French visual artist Emile Barret.

In order to realise the new ten-day VIDEODROOM programme, including a whole series of afterparties, Vooruit and Film Fest Gent are again collaborating with lots of partners such as All Eyes On Hip Hop, Springstof, Gouvernement and Slagwerk.

VIDEODROOM: a 10-day unique cross-over universe, balancing between film and music
10-19 Oct 2018
Tickets & more info at www.vooruit.be