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Vancouver musician and composer Jason Zumpano conceived of this stylish and meditative film project.
Under the name The Cyrillic Typewriter Zumpano has produced four previous albums, with various collaborators. In Water Over Glass (which is a standalone album as well as a film), he is joined by Terri Upton on bass and John Spiby on tenor saxophone. Zumpano plays various vintage synthesizers, as well as electric piano, guitar and percussion. The dreamy ambient sounds are inspired by the synthesizer sounds of the 1970s.
He invited four filmmakers, Kellen Jackson, Zoe Kirk-Gushowaty, Jimi Pantalon, and Amanda Thomson, to dream up visual accompaniments. They use a variety of techniques to create imaginative film sequences that complement what began as Zumpano’s internal sonic landscape. The result could have been simply a soundtrack with visuals, or four films with some music playing in the background. Instead the project really fuses as a whole, and is deeply immersive and hypnotic. The aesthetic certainly harkens back to the grainy 1970s vibe—a little gritty, murky, grimy. One sequence features weird animation, another is an abstract narrative of a man digging a hole and escaping on a boat, while another involves seascapes which are imposed over a human body.
The film looks backwards to a bygone age, nostalgic for a time of analogue technology (though some digital techniques are used). One wonders whether the film yearns for what seemed like a simpler time, when some of the artists were children, or whether it sees the past as pure fantasy, constantly created and recreated in our own minds. Whether or not the film has a particular point of view, it is certainly evocative and thought-provoking.