KLAVIERKLANG (2024) Screening and Director/Collaborators Discussion

KLAVIERKLANG

experimental performance video, 17 mins, 33 secs, 2024

Screening begins at 3:00PM

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Klavierklang, a cinematic tone poem, follows a young girl in post-war Germany who grows up loving the piano. She takes piano lessons—but instead of freeing the girl to play, the lessons make her frightened of making mistakes. The girl’s ears shut down, making music an uninspiring chore.

Later, as a young woman, she travels to central British Columbia, to a ghost town and an abandoned house. There she spots a piano — perfectly ruined, a piano on which no note could be a mistake. She learns to listen again — and the girl and her music are free.

That girl went on to become celebrated soundscape composer/activist Hildegard Westerkamp. In this experimental performance video, she joins forces with renowned pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, who also performs Klavierklang’s text. Together, they explore the liminal space between music and sound.

In a celebration of the piano as an extraordinary instrument — and sound sculpture — Iwaasa both plays its keys and plucks its strings.

Filmmakers and installation artists Nettie Wild (director) and Michael Brockington(editor) capture this performance, interpreting the drama of the composition and the nonlinear narrative with lyrical imagery coloured and shaped by the music itself.

Klavierklang, which means “piano sounds” in German, is produced by Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa and Hildegard Westerkamp.

Joining director Nettie Wild for the post screening discussion will be fellow collaborators composer Hildegard Westerkamp, pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa and editor Michael Brockington.

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“Klavierklang” is a mesmerizing meditation on freedom and sound. A must-see for anyone drawn to the intersection of sound, storytelling and visual art.

Giorgio Magnanensi, Artistic Director, Vancouver New Music Society

A mature work of visual music storytelling … a great piece of short filmmaking and collaboration. 

Paul Wong, video artist

A good tale, with universal themes, “Klavierklang” is an intense and spectacular short film.

Gloria Macarenko, CBCradio, On the Coast.

A unique collaboration, “Klavierklang” is an extraordinary piece.  I haven’t seen anything like it before.

Margaret Gallagher, CBC radio, North by Northwest

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Awards & Recognitions

Premiered at Music on Main’s Modulus Festival, Vancouver,fall, 2025

Official Selection, International Festival of Films on Art (Le FIFA), Montreal, 2026

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Also on the program….

Beneath The Forest Floor

two channel audio soundscape,  17 minutes 23 secs. 1992

Created by: composer HIldegard Westerkamp

Commissioned by CBC Radio for Two New Hours.

Recommended for broadcast by the International Music Council’s Rostrum of Electroacoustic Music

Special mention at Prix Italia

The last remaining stands of old-growth forests continue to be in danger of being logged. The sound recordings for Beneath the Forest Floor were made in one of these ancient places, the Carmanah Valley, half of which had already been destroyed by clear-cut logging.  Beneath the Forest Floor offers a space in time for our ears to travel into the deeper regions of forest, the forest in us, so to speak. Better even, it hopes to encourage listeners to visit these old-growth forests and dare to face what is lost if they disappear.

Round Up

experimental documentary video, 3 mins

Watch 4000 cattle return from summer grazing to 20 families who share a communal pasture and corral. Director Nettie Wild teams up with editor Michael Brockington and cinematographer Patrick McLaughlin to capture visual patterns from sky and ground to frame an evocative contemplation of the relationship between human and animals, landscape and architecture.

Round Up appears courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada