Presto, Perfect Sound

Manon de Boer’s film Presto — Perfect Sound depicts composer and violinist, George Van Dam, performing the fourth movement of a Bartok violin sonata. In order to achieve the ‘perfect’ soundtrack, de Boer edited together the audio track from the five different recordings with the performer and then edited the film to this soundtrack. In allowing the audio sequence to dictate the image on screen, de Boer inverts the traditional dominance of image over sound in cinema. The film is a meditation on the relationship between sound and image and offers an intense reflection on a moment of creative concentration, when the subject is fully absorbed, almost as if out of sync with the world around him.