Films & Events

This new film version of the play Borrowed Landscape is a collaboration between playwright duo tauchgold, composer Dai Fujikura, the BlackBox Ensemble, and cinematographer Kevin Chiu. The film is taken from the live premiere of the work at the Noguchi Museum in Queens, NY on November 8, 2023. The screening of this film coincides with the BlackBox ensemble’s 2024 southeast tour, which will end with a feature on the Southern Exposure New Music Series at The University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC on Oct 4, 2024.

About the film: A famous Stradivarius, walled up for years in a cellar in Budapest. A double bass, left behind in 1939 when fleeing from Poland to Erez Israel. A piano, silenced after the Hiroshima bomb killed its young owner. The musicians of a trio approach the stories of their three special instruments. What secrets are hidden in them? What meaning do we humans assign to things? Can an object, can an instrument develop something like personality? Does an instrument remember – or: how does it remember its players? What is memory, what is forgetting? What must be remembered, what can be forgotten? – These are the questions the musicians of a piano trio explore when they are invited to a memorial concert in Hiroshima.

Stage Direction and script; tauchgold
Music; Dai Fujikura
Cinematography; Kevin Chiu
Audio; Tyler Neidermeyer

Cast;
Voice 1: Liz Dutton
Voice 2: Michael Bertolini
Voice 3: Melani Camille Michiko Carrié
Voice 4: Thomas Deen Baker

Musicians;
Members of BlackBox Ensemble, Artistic Director Leonard Bopp
Violin: Teagan Faran
Double Bass: Samuel Zagnit
Piano: Yifei Xu

Our thanks to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum Curatorial Division and Hirotani Akito for allowing us to use excerpts from Akiko’s diaries.

70 min.