{"id":3269,"date":"2024-11-02T11:53:53","date_gmt":"2024-11-02T11:53:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hermesensemble.be\/la-perle\/"},"modified":"2024-11-21T11:03:46","modified_gmt":"2024-11-21T11:03:46","slug":"la-perle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hermesensemble.be\/en\/la-perle\/","title":{"rendered":"La Perle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Film by Henri d’Ursel
\nSoundtrack by Mireille Capelle<\/strong><\/p>\n

Between 21 November 2024 and 1 June 2025, Henri D’Ursel’s La Perle with Mireille Capelle’s soundtrack will be part of the exhibition Paris, Capitale de la Perle<\/a> organised by the prestigious L’\u00c9COLE, School of Jewelry Arts in Paris.<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the request of the Royal Belgian Film Archive, Mireille Capelle was one of seven composers asked to write a soundtrack to a series of Belgian early surrealist films. The set was published as a boxset<\/a> with music performed by the HERMESensemble and an introductory text by Xavier Canonne.<\/p>\n

Mireille Capelle comments on this assignment:<\/p>\n

\u2018When the Royal Belgian Film Archive (Cinematek) proposed to have the HERMESensemble compose the music for some of the black-and-white films that were screened and they entrusted me with \u2018La Perle\u2019, I was immediately seduced by the story, the characters, the melancholy too, the images and the narrative of this string of pearls that I think express our aspirations, our dreams, our mirages, our unconscious. It’s a fascinating film.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Count Henri d’Ursel (1900-1974) lived in Paris in the 1920s, where he was in contact with the surrealists and avant-garde filmmakers. He was an extra in Man Ray’s film Les Myst\u00e8res du ch\u00e2teau de D\u00e9 (1929). La Perle is d’Ursel’s only film that he shot that same year under the pseudonym Henri d’Arche after a screenplay by French poet George Hugnet. The hero, played by Hugnet, buys a string of pearls for his beloved, but loses it again and again in a series of strange encounters and bizarre transitions between city and nature.<\/p>\n

Mireille Capelle’s composition for La Perle is in line with her practice of sonorous architectural compositions<\/a>, of which she has realised 17 so far. For this, the starting point can be very diverse: an art form, certain objects or shapes, a certain time period. For example, for all the exhibitions in Palazzo Fortuny in Venezia by Axel Vervoordt or the composition around the carpet La Dame \u00e0 la Licorne<\/a> (2021). It always involves an intensely concentrated working method in which the end result can be compared to the creation of a layered perfume. In the case of La Perle, Mireille Capelle was concerned with turning the subtleties of the film, including the wonderment around and repeated touching of the string of pearls, into sound. Working with Jean-Marc Sullon as musical assistant for editing and mixing, accidental discoveries emerged that contributed to the final sound atmosphere.<\/p>\n

Edith Doove, curator<\/p>\n