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Cam Christiansen was at a low level seven or eight years in the past when he attended a music camp in Bragg Creek.
The filmmaker had all the time been a music fan however didn’t start enjoying guitar till he was in his 40s. The camp run by Foothills Acoustic Music Institute included a typical campfire song-swap and Christiansen heard musician Ziggy Ryerson play a tune.
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“I used to be in a reasonably darkish place, sadly, however I used to be going off to those music camps and I discovered it very rejuvenating,” Christiansen says. “One night time I used to be listening to his music and it simply floored me. It was the primary time I had ever heard his music and it knocked me again. I went again to my little cabin and was mendacity there considering, ‘What on earth simply occurred? That was so highly effective.’ It actually moved me and I couldn’t actually place it, what was taking place. It form of gave me this kernel.
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“There’s one thing notably highly effective about music, it’s probably the most uncooked and intense of the humanities and has a means of attending to your soul, principally. I went down the rabbit gap from there.”
His journey down the rabbit gap took greater than three years and produced the mind-bending documentary Echo of Every thing. The movie, which premiered at Toronto’s Sizzling Docs in 2023, is a globe-trotting, imagery-heavy rumination on the ability of music that finds Christiansen weaving ideas about his personal connection to music with full of life performances and interviews with musicians and specialists.
Echo of Every thing could have its first public screening in Calgary on Saturday, April 6 on the Lantern Group Church as a part of a fundraiser for Foothills Acoustic Music Institute. It would additionally characteristic performances by David Morrissey, Horizon Ridge and Ziggy Ryerson.
It would give Calgarians the primary probability to see the visually gorgeous and thematically bold Echo of Every thing in full-screen glory. Narrated by Christiansen, the movie additionally options the work of One Yellow Rabbit’s Andy Curtis, who inspired the filmmaker so as to add in his personal story and who performs a “German-expressionism” model of Christiansen all through the movie.
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Whereas the documentary’s major thrust appears to be that our visceral and cerebral connection to music is mysterious and enigmatic, Christiansen and his gallery of specialists strive their greatest to untangle the science and philosophy behind it with decidedly trippy outcomes.
“At first, I actually needed to make a science-of-the-brain form of movie,” he says. “There are these well-known books like Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia or Daniel Leviton’s guide, Your Mind on Music. I used to be actually impressed by that and I used to be going via a street that was like that. Midway via the movie, I had a little bit of a disaster. The response I used to be getting from individuals was like, ‘It’s attention-grabbing, it’s superbly made however we don’t actually perceive why you’re making it and it’s not likely grounded in an emotional reality or something like that. So, I rethought it and that’s when Andy Curtis entered the image. I reached out to him as a result of he has been working with One Yellow Rabbit for many years and I assumed ‘If anyone is aware of join with an viewers, it will be these guys.’”
Apparently, whereas the movie takes us to Spain, Senegal, Paris, Rome, New York, Minneapolis, Calgary and the U.Ok., it was shot throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, which compelled Christiansen to be inventive. He ended up hiring freelancers in these nations to seize the footage he wanted.
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“Like everyone, I used to be in lockdown,” he says. “I used to be going to shoot all the pieces in Calgary myself. With the pandemic, I noticed I couldn’t do any of that. Then I noticed I might work remotely with individuals and thought ‘If I can work remotely, I can do it anyplace on the earth. I began doing all these experiments in Rome, Paris, Dekar, New York and all that. It was simply actually thrilling. It was an entertaining factor to do throughout the pandemic and likewise gave it a world view on music.”
Echo of Every thing is Christiansen’s follow-up to 2017’s Wall, a surprising animated documentary he did with the Nationwide Movie Board of Canada based mostly on the work of British playwright David Hare concerning the bodily and philosophical fence separating Israel and Palestine. Christiansen had labored primarily in animation in his early profession however that movie, whereas a important success, was so emotionally and bodily exhausting that he swore off doing any extra animation. So followers will probably be completely satisfied to see Christiansen’s animation return in Echo of Every thing, albeit in a much less all-consuming method.
“It began creeping its means again in,” he says. “It was a significantly better steadiness. It didn’t eat me alive when it comes to time and stress. It was a significantly better use of animation. Simply little prospers, not the complete factor. It was means simpler to take care of.”
The Echo of Every thing will probably be proven on April 6 on the Lantern Group Church. Doorways open at 6 p.m. Tickets are $25 upfront or $30 on the door. Echo of Every thing will even be out there to stream for every week beginning April 7 at www.offgridpictures.com.
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