(2007) 15 minutes, video

 

 

Synopsis:
The empty spaces of an ambiguous building open-up to reveal a group of aspiring musicians as they play together, alone.

Drum Room reflects on relationships between individual and group, as young musicians express their collective and individual identities within the ordered conventions of the institution they inhabit.

 

 

Few films have celebrated the beauty and mystery of empty spaces and vacant interiors. Miranda Pennell does so with a very graphic art, filming details that accentuate the poetry and emotional charge that emerges from spaces in which anything can happen. Hallways and doors, air vents, the geometry of false ceilings are as a landscape before battle. Few films have sought to film sound. As the rooms start to come alive, it is as much through the musicians’ themselves as by the sounds and rhythms that they produce. As she films the musicians, Miranda Pennell also films the visual and sound recuperations they provoke: attention to movement (drum sticks rotating against blue background) as much as the sound created by the instrument. She illustrates very well the idea that the beauty of musical interpretation lies in the physical presence of the musician and the manner in which this presence inhabits the space. Sound becomes a form that colours silence.
Christian Borghino (translated from French) 2008, Clermont Ferrand Short Film Festival