They Shoot, Glass Scores

It was an encounter with cinema 35 years ago that caused Philip Glass to develop the style that has made him famous. As a music student in Paris, he collaborated with Ravi Shankar on a score for “Chappaqua,” a psychedelic underground film, and that first exposure to the Indian music inspired what became his reductive, Minimalist approach to composition.

Glass’ next rendezvous with cinema, in 1983, was with Godfrey Reggio’s mesmeric “Koyaanisqatsi,” in which filmmaker and composer brought something new to the poetic interaction between moving image and music. And since then, Glass has made writing for films an intriguing sideline to his career. His work in features has ranged from the brilliant (“Mishima” and “Kundun”) to the appalling (“Hamburger Hill” and “Candyman”); but where he has broken ground has been in experimenting with the interactions between a mechanical medium and live performance.

And that is the basis for “Philip on Film,” a five-program series that began Tuesday night in UCLA’s Royce Hall with a program of short films, all shown with live accompaniment by the Philip Glass Ensemble. Four of the shorts were new, with two from the past decade by Reggio.

The new films were made by directors who have a flexible approach to cinematic technique and narrative, and who invite music to be an equal partner. Atom Egoyan’s “Diaspora” is an excellent example of how powerful that partnership can be. The percussive score evokes the herd of scrambling sheep that the Canadian director breaks into split screens, with colors bleeding and brief intercuts of burning houses, building to a terrifying climax.

Peter Greenaway’s “The Man in the Bath” is concerned with some of the British director’s usual obsessions--water, the human body, calligraphy. A nude man, tubs, cursive writing, moving cubes and gorgeous, screen-filling splashes of blue bath water all proceed in their way. But Greenaway allows space for Glass’ score--colorfully orchestrated and harmonically unpredictable--to proceed in its way as well, each art enriching the other.

Shirin Neshat, on the other hand, requires a specific kind of music. Her “Passage” contains the stark visions of Islamic culture that mark the Iranian-born artist’s work in video and still photography. Galvanized by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, she presents, against a background of sea and rocky land, the contrasts between a funeral procession of men carrying a body in white shroud, black-robed women huddled in a circle furiously digging in the sand and a lone child piling rocks. Fire surrounds them at the end, as if the eruption of their passions. Glass’ music is cool, somber and insistently processional, which helps bring to life what is essentially a series of striking images that need sustaining motion.

Another perspective is offered by Michal Rovner’s “Notes.” Like Neshat, the Israeli director and visual artist provides equally stark images of men on either side of a sandy divide, eventually looking like birds standing on telephone wires. Her film, too, benefits from somber, processional music. The Glass scores tie both films together by maintaining the same mood--demonstrating that tragedy, wherever found, is tragedy.

The Reggio shorts were “Anima Mundi,” perhaps the most alluring nature film ever made, and “Evidence,” which concentrates on children concentrating on television.

“Evidence” is accompanied by an older Glass score, “Facades.” The wondrous close-ups and vistas of animals in “Anima Mundi” are enlivened by riotously infectious music that helps makes one fall in love with every creature--even the really ugly ones.

Michael Riesman conducts the dozen-member ensemble, in which Glass plays keyboard, with a remarkable flexibility, interacting with the films rather than mechanically following them.

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“Philip on Film” continues with “Dracula” tonight, “La Belle et la Bte” on Friday and “Koyaanisqatsi” on Saturday, 8 p.m., $15-$35, Royce Hall, UCLA (310) 825-2101.