Evgueni Galperine x Bi Gan
Shards of Moon
Evgueni Galperine
After drifting from his hometown Tsjeliabinsk, located in Ural, to Kiev and Moscow 16-year-old Evgueni Galparine, along with his brother Sacha and their parents, eventually ended up in Paris. That’s where they finished their musical education, which started in Moscow in 1990. Evgueni followed his father’s footsteps by choosing classical music, while his brother Sacha explored rock and electronic music. In the meantime Evgueni gained experience as a composer by working for marketing agencies.
He composed music on his own for several feature films, such as Le Passé by Asghar Farhadi, but he mostly worked as a duo with his brother Sacha. Together they composed impressive scores, such as Loveless by Andrei Zvyagintsev, Malavita by Luc Besson, Corpus Christi by Jan Komasa and L'événement by Audrey Diwan. Their soundtrack for The Invader by Nicolas Provost won the award for Best Music at Film Fest Gent in 2011. They also wrote the music for Gagarine, which won the Explore Award at the festival in 2020.
For Evgueni Galperine a score starts with an idea that he connects to a certain instrument. Experimenting seems like a second nature to him, demonstrated by his latest album Theory of Becoming which he presented at Film Fest Gent in 2022. The album serves as a bridge between the world of film music and contemporary music.
Bi Gan
The Bi family's fears that it would all come to nothing with their son Gan came to an end when he saw Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker at school. It was then that he discovered that becoming a film director was his true calling. Yet he did not set foot into a film school, nor did he seek an internship on a film set. He simply started shooting a short film, South, with which he won first prize at a university film festival.
His next short film, Diamond Sutra, also proved to be an award winner. In 2015, the film world was introduced to his debut feature Kaili Blues and Bi Gan was universally praised for his innovative and refreshing style. In this road movie across Guizhou province, he also incorporates his own poetry and showcases his typical destroyer style. Gi Ban writes something out and then throws away all the ballast. The same happens during filming and editing. In this way, he achieves a dreamy effect infused with melancholy. Working with a one take or a longshot also gives his films an alienating, magical feel. In his second feature Long Day's Journey Into Night, he even uses 3D in a nearly hour-long sequence. In both films, the city of Kaili where he was born on 4 June 1989 plays an important role. But he does underline that the Kaili portrayed in the film has little connection to the city where he still lives. In 2022, Film Fest Gent screened his most recent short film, A Short Story. A magical fairy tale about a cat in a long mackintosh.
