WIND

Description

The breath, the wind. The image takes flight in the distance, disappearing from our memory. It was two years ago, the evening Ibrahim Maalouf came to the Cinémathèque Française to play his accompanying music for René Clair's film, *La proie du vent* (The Prey of the Wind). A silent film made in 1927. Holding its breath, the audience listened as Ibrahim Maalouf settled into the rhythm of the film, accompanying the breath of the images. A gamble won! Jazz + silent film, what a beautiful alliance, what a gentle way to bring back to us the silent mystery of cinema from another era. René Clair's film can be watched without accompanying music. Ibrahim Maalouf's music can be listened to alone, without images. But the meeting of the two creates an incredible ensemble, a kind of unprecedented collision, a very moving live performance due to the fact that the music, in a sense, interprets the film, extends it, unearths its rhythm, that is to say, its editing. That evening, the spectator had the very rare feeling of living the film. By bowing to the constraint of respecting the rhythm of *La Proie du vent*, Ibrahim Maalouf creates a work of freedom. Listening to his music, one feels the pleasure he takes in escaping, in playing hooky, in adding an oriental tonality to the film, as if to accompany René Clair's images even further, towards unknown lands. Ibrahim Maalouf is not afraid to be sometimes melancholic, sometimes joyful and fast, in short, to be modern. And it is this musical modernity that breathes new life into *La Proie du vent*. Serge Toubiana