/15 Mountains

Carlos Casas

Avalanche_excerpt

(2009-on going project)
HD (various formats, various durations)
OVERTURE/INTRODUCTION/INTERLUDE

Avalanche is a film about Hichigh, one of the world's highest inhabitated villages in the Pamir mountains (Tajikistan), known as the roof of the world. An audiovisual meditation on disappearance, Avalanche is a research on the relationship between film, music and landscape, a physical as well as a mental experience, transporting the spectator into a state of flotation. One of the most unknown regions in the world, the Pamirs are as mysterious as fascinating, home of some of the most ancient and well kept traditions in the world. The film follows the dusk of a village bound to disappear, just before it becomes a ghost village, just before its stones and mud houses become part of the mountain again. Avalanche is a work in progress, and a site specific film, the film is adapted and reedited in relation to the context on which is presented, each occasion and space changes. It can be presented with live music, as an installation or a single channel film projection. "This film marks the first collaboration between Carlos Casas and American composer and filmmaker legend Phill Niblock. Spanish director Carlos Casas is known for bringing an experimental approach to documentary, always developing different forms of work for every project: long features and short essays, installations or live performances. Avalanche is a document in progress, since 2005 Casas has been travelling to the Pamirs to continue the work. Since the end of the 1960s, Phill Niblock's music focuses on sound textures created by multiple tones in very dense, often atonal tunings performed in long durations. The overtones and the reverberation of sound into space are essential in his work. Niblock is also a filmmaker, whose series The Movement of People Working has had a particular influence on Casas. Niblock's piece Stosspeng was used by Casas during the shooting as a sort of permanenet soundtrack a way to tune with the landscape."

Sonar Festival Barcelona, 2010
Bozar. Palais des Beaux Arts Bruxelles, 2010
Torino Film Festival, 2010
Fondazione Galleria Civica Trento, 2011
Trento Film Festival, 2011

www.carloscasas.net