“What’s Left When”, by Aleksandr Brusentsev

I was approached by composer Alex Brusentsev to create a film to accompany his original piece for solo trumpet, recorded by Imogen Hancock.

We batted around a lot of ideas, looking for something that would parallel the piece’s ebbs and flows of free and frustrated motion. Gradually we settled on an expressionistic representation the internal psychological experience of an asylum / citizenship claimant essentially going to war with an application form, in a darkened room, somewhere in the bowels of bureaucratic hades.

Choreographer Siobhan Knox worked with actor and clown Stephen Sobal to create a spectrum of gestures and dance – from the realistic to the melodramatic via the absurd, and in the edit we wove together a piece that a former war refugee and personal friend described as “very upsetting and real”.

Cinematography by Alex Magill

Camera assistance and Ronin operation by Dougal Wallace

For a full breakdown of the internal logic of Alex’s piece, check out his write-up here: https://www.brusenta.com/whatsleftwhen