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Contemporary sound art belongs on the stage? Yes! However, it is also an audiovisual experience, as Claudia Janet Birkholz proves. She produces music videos in collaboration with the prestigious filmmaker Christine Jezior, whose works have won awards in Italy, India, Great Britain and the USA. Multi-award-winning short films that capture sounds in pictures, make stories emotionally tangible on multiple levels and convey the mood of a composition directly to the audience through elaborately staged visualisation. Moving cinematography, which creates scenarios which at times seem out of this world. And which achieves one thing above all: speaking to the subconscious directly with contemporary music. On this page, you will find a selection of short films Claudia Janet Birkholz has worked on.
Audiovisual artwork.
It’s not only the musical playing that attracts Claudia Janet Birkholz. In recent years, she has also become increasingly involved in the audiovisual sector: She has recorded contemporary pieces – and develops concepts in collaboration with the internationally acclaimed Polish filmmaker Christine Jezior for the translation of sound images into film. This interdisciplinary approach has resulted in cinematographic works that support the listening experience through an additional graphic level, and simultaneously attributes a new meaning to the music video. While in modern culture this art has degenerated primarily into a marketing instrument for mainstream music, here it takes on a completely different function – namely that of forming a high-quality, complete work of art from sound and image that opens up entire worlds of sound and provides a new approach to contemporary sound art.
ACTING
The short film ‘Acting’ was created in 2018 and focuses on a central theme of our time: self-optimisation. Surrounded by portraits of perfection, superficial illusions of what is apparently necessary, a better version of the self always appears within reach, always in close proximity – if you only make an effort. A never-ending quest for a vision of the ideal life, shaped to the maximum extent by external forces, leaving no room for weakness, no time for rest, no satisfaction with pure being.
Together with Julina Nishimine, Claudia Janet Birkholz designed the screenplay, developed costumes and composed the music. The result is an artful sequence of words, noises and sounds that demands discipline and development, whether in sports or in musical play. And in the end, a look into other people’s windows shows that it still is not enough.
A film like a frenzied and a drastic depiction of our time, which is part of the Official Selection of many film festivals and has won several awards in Great Britain, Venezuela, India, Turkey, Brazil and Germany, among others.
Crew
| Director | Christine Jezior |
| Screenplay | Claudia Birkholz and Julina Nishimine |
| Producer | Christine Jezior |
| Director of Photography | Bartosz Bialobrzeski |
| Costume Design | Claudia Birkholz and Julina Nishimine |
| Sound | Matthias Nordhorn |
| Editor | Bartosz Bialobrzeski |
| Sound Design | Matthias Nordhorn |
| Music | Claudia Janet Birkholz |
Cast
| Woman | Claudia Janet Birkholz |
| Gym trainer | Jacek Kapturek |
| Green girl | Nico Seemann |
| Red girl | Julina Nishimine |
| Blue girl | Emilie Nishimine |
SONATA
Searching, finding inspiration in your own environment, discovering new things and combining them with the old – it’s like picking up shells on the beach and integrating them into your own play. With his works, John Cage has shown how new musical landscapes are created when one creatively engages with the unknown. For his Sonata he prepared grand pianos with bolts, screws and rubber bands – and thus made completely new sounds possible.
In the black and white short film SONATA, Claudia Janet Birkholz plays a composition by John Cage – and supports the sound journey by loading the music with strong images. What seems like a psychological thriller at the beginning takes a surprising turn that creates tension until the end.
Claudia Janet Birkholz developed the costumes for Christine Jezior’s short film and herself also appears in front of the camera. It is an impressive work that has also received high international recognition – including at film festivals in Switzerland, Belgium, the United States, Great Britain and Greece as well as Sweden, India, Argentina and Germany.
Crew
| Director | Christine Jezior |
| Screenplay | Christine Jezior |
| Producer | Christine Jezior, MAAM TV |
| Director of Photography | Bartosz Bialobrzeski |
| Costume Design | Claudia Janet Birkholz |
| Sound | Matthias Nordhorn |
| Editor | Bartosz Bialobrzeski |
| Sound Design | Matthias Nordhorn |
| Music | John Cage |
Cast
| Claudia Janet Birkholz |
Creating impressive things together
Do you have an idea for a concert programme, a short film in the field of contemporary music, or are you looking for someone who is able to translate your compositions into images? Please contact us with your enquiry to Claudia Janet Birkholz. Furthermore, we offer experienced filmmakers and videographers the opportunity to accompany Claudia Janet Birkholz at one of her concerts.