Frank Scheffer
Frank SCHEFFER (1956, The Netherlands) graduated in 1982 from the Dutch Film and Television Academy. Before that, he studied at the Academy for Industrial Design in Eindhoven and followed courses in Experimental Film by Frans Zwartjes. Scheffer has a long-standing reputation as a maker of over 40 experimental documentaries about musical masters of the 20th century. He has received many awards and was honoured with a retrospective at the MoMA New York. He works with prominent post-war composers like Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, John Cage, Elliott Carter, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Frank Zappa. In his films, image and sound are orchestrated to offer the audience a unique visual and audial experience. For the 40th edition of IFFR, he made the creative documentary Tiger Eyes (2011). The Inner Landscape (2019) had its world premiere at IFFR 2019 as its closing film. The filmmaker founded Allegri Company, a production company that specialises in music and documentaries.
Filmography
(selection) Zoetrope People (1982), Time Is Music (1987), Helicopter String Quartet (1996), Conducting Mahler (1996), Sonic Acts (1998), Frank Zappa: The Present Day Composer Refuses to Die (2000), In the Ocean (2001), A Labyrinth of Time (2004), The One All Alone (2009), Gozaran – Time Passing (2011), De Waarneming (2016), Inner Landscape (2019), Gustav Mahler – Singer for the Earth (2022), Intensely Soulful (2023), Half Moon (2025)
More info: Wikipedia, Frank Scheffer
Frank Scheffer op IFFR
-
Five orchestral pieces
Frank Scheffer | 50' | Netherlands | World premiere
Documentary constructed like Schönberg’s revolutionary composition with the same name. -
Eclat
Frank Scheffer | 40' | Netherlands | World premiere
Documentary about composition by and with the great contemporary composer Pierre Boulez. -
-
Sonic Fragments (The Poetics of Digital Fragmentation)
Ian Kerkhof, Frank Scheffer, Miriam Kruishoop, Rob Schröder, Alexander Oey | 70' | Netherlands | World premiere
Seven Dutch film-makers have made a radical remix of the Sonic Images project. The result is so new, so now, that the substance cannot yet… -
Music for Airports
Frank Scheffer | Netherlands | -
On an enormous outdoor screen on Schouwburgplein among the works screened will be Johan van der Keuken’s loop Temps/Travail and Frank Scheffer’s Music -
In the Ocean
Frank Scheffer | 55' | Netherlands | World premiere
This film looks at the state of modern music in New York at the turn of the 21st century. Interviews with John Cage, Elliot Carter,… -
Where was I?
Jacques Laureys | 55' | Netherlands | World premiere
Documentary film sketches a picture of singer-songwriter Tim Rose, who wrote legendary songs – including Hey Joe – yet was in danger of becoming a… -
Sonic Genetics
Philipp Virus, Ian Kerkhof, Frank Scheffer, Dick Tuinder, Gerald Van Der Kaap | Japan | -
As a sequal to the successful Sonic Images, this is the latest part of the Sonic project. New work, a transformation of existing material and… -
Something Old, Something New in Red, Green and Blue
Frank Scheffer | 7' | Netherlands | World premiere
Colour music for the digital eye.
