2016 Sacem Day Sacem Day
The Sacem (French Society of Musical Authors, Composers and Publishers) is happy to continue its association this year with the États généraux du film documentaire at Lussas.
Alongside those who breathe life into documentary creation through their talent and daily labour, our society will naturally bear witness to the strong ties linking music and the image.
Among its fifty-seven thousand members, including more than three thousand filmmakers, a large number of Sacem’s composers work for the film and audiovisual industries. Composers and directors speak one and the same language: that of the film they are creating together.
Music will be highlighted during this year’s Sacem Day at Lussas.
The public is invited to meet composer Marc Marder on the occasion, notably, of a screening of the film Exile by Rithy Panh, selected at this year’s Cannes festival.
2016 is a special year for Marc Marder and Rithy Panh who are celebrating thirty years of collaboration and their twentieth film together!
The event will take place over two sessions and will allow us to revisit the director’s production with an eye to the work of the composer in order to better understand the importance and the role of music in cinematic creation.
Two very fine musical documentaries have been distinguished by the Sacem this year. The Sacem Prize for best musical documentary, selected by a jury of professionals, will be awarded to L’Océan électro by Philippe Orreindy.
The jury also gave a special mention to the documentary François de Roubaix, l’aventurier by Jean-Yves Guilleux and Alexandre Moix.
So many moments that illustrate the constant support the Sacem provides through its cultural activities to the young talents of music for the image, but also to writers and directors of musical documentaries.
A very fine festival to you all!
Jean-Claude Petit
Composer
President of the Board of Governors of the Sacem
A day with Marc Marder
It is an honor to be invited here to share my experiences and thoughts on composing music for film and I’d like to thank the Sacem and the États généraux du film documentaire for this unique opportunity.
When I began composing music for film there were no schools or university courses dedicated to this profession and I feel quite lucky about that. Every film composer I knew or read about at the time had not at all made a conscious decision to become a film composer and it was always by some amusing and roundabout turn of events that he began. It was the chance encounter of a musician with a filmmaker that transformed the musician into a film composer.
I was studying the contrabass at my university and I had a room in the basement where I could keep my unwieldy instrument and practice which happened to be right next to the film department’s storage room. I was working on some wild contemporary piece which involved all sorts of playing, percussion, singing and screaming which Charles Lane heard through the wall one evening. He knocked on my door and asked for some help transcribing melodies he had written for a film he was editing. I said maybe I could do better than that and we began a six month collaboration on his student film, a silent one (!), that wet my appetite to continue and forty years later we’re still working together.
A funny coincidence is that I met Rithy Panh many years later in Paris through this same piece of contemporary music for contrabass solo and here this year in Lussas we are celebrating twenty films which I scored for him and our thirty years of friendship.
All that was chance or fate or what have you but the real desire to pursue a career in the field comes from the magic discovered in what music and image can create when fused and the hope of doing it better and better with each project. I hope I can clarify all this on the 24th of August –
Marc Marder
Encounter led by Arnaud de Mezamat.
In the presence of Marc Marder, Philippe Orreindy, Jean-Yves Guilleux and Alexandre Moix.