Film

  • The Farnsworth Scores
    Directed by Rob Mazurek and Lee Anne Schmitt
  • GRANTEE
    Rob Mazurek & Lee Anne Schmitt
    GRANT YEAR
    2016

Britt Mazurek, Rob Mazurek and the Farnsworth House Image 2, 2016, Plano, IL. Courtesy of the artist.

The Farnsworth Scores is an experimental film and musical composition conceived by cornetist and visual artist Rob Mazurek, in collaboration with filmmaker Lee Anne Schmitt. The film and soundtrack capture the interaction between humans, nature, and architecture at Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's iconic Farnsworth House. With its steel frame and walls of uninterrupted glass, the Farnsworth House stands as a contemplative, sculptural dwelling intended by the architect to give nature "a more profound significance than if viewed from outside." The glass, which simultaneously delineates and joins interior and exterior space, acts as catalyst for this expanded dialogue. The Farnsworth Scores uses the transparency of the glass to shift the viewer playfully between the house's interior and exterior, while the soundtrack reveals the separation. The film explores the intimacy of the artistic process and questions architecture's role in reconnecting humanity with nature.

Rob Mazurek is a composer, cornetist, and improviser, whose broad electro-acoustic palette defies simple categorization. His work has earned him a reputation as a respected figure in the international creative music and avant-jazz scenes. His expansive vision and vast catalog of over 350 compositions and 62 recordings have kept him reshaping modern music's cutting edge for the past three decades. He leads and composes for projects ranging in size from solo to orchestra. Mazurek's solo endeavors highlight the breadth of his virtuosity and rich improvisational vocabulary. His work has been featured in The Wire (UK), DownBeat, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. As a multimedia artist, he has exhibited his video, painting, and print works internationally, including commissions from New Music USA and the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, among others.

Lee Anne Schmitt is a Los Angeles-based artist and filmmaker interested in political thought, personal experience and the land. Much of her work involves 16mm filmmaking placed in landscape, object and the traces of political systems left upon them. Her projects have addressed American exceptionalism, the logic of labor, racial violence, cowboyism, trauma, and the efficacy of solitude. Schmitt has exhibited at film festivals and venues, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), The Getty (Los Angeles, CA), REDCAT Theater (Los Angeles, CA), Northwest Film Society (Portland, OR), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Viennale (Italy), Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (Denmark), Oberhausen International Film Festival (Germany), Rotterdam International Film Festival (the Netherlands), Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema (Argentina) and the International Film Festival Marseilles (France). In 2015, Schmitt received a Creative Capital Award. She is also associate director of the Film Directing Program at the California Institute of the Arts.