Frank Scheffer
Frank Scheffer was born in 1956 and is internationally recognized as a master of sound and image. He founded Allegri Film Company, which specializes in documentaries on music and art. Scheffer was schooled at the Academy for Industrial Design (Eindhoven), “Vrije Academie” Art College (Den Haag) where he studied with the famous experimental filmmaker Frans Zwartjes and is a graduate from the Dutch Film Academy (Amsterdam). Early films include ‘Zoetrope People’ (1982), a documentary on Francis Ford Coppola, as well as documentaries on the Dalai Lama. Through his collaboration with Marina Abramovic, he came into contact with John Cage, animportant source of inspiration for Scheffer.
Scheffer’s films on music constitute an overview of the great composers of the 20th century — from ‘Conducting Mahler’ (1996) on the famous 1995 Mahler Festival in Amsterdam to ‘Five Orchestral Pieces’ (1994) on Arnold Schönberg‘s work. The history of Electronic Music, from Stockhausen to DJ Spooky and Squarepusher, was thesubject of ‘Sonic Acts’ (1998). Which was followed by three experimental projects searching for the influence of the digital medium in film and music: ‘Sonic Images’ (1998), ‘Sonic Fragments / The Poetics of Digital Fragmentation’ (1999), ‘Sonic Genetics ‘(2000).
In 2006 several of his films and a Docu-Concert were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In addition to numerous critical and festival awards (Special Price by Dutch Film Critics), Scheffer was honoured with a retrospective of his films at the 2001 Holland Festival and in 2007 at Wien Modern in Vienna, Austria.