The men and women of the society in Andante had lost the physiological capability of dreaming in their sleep, and consequently the means of achieving deep and meaningful sleep in itself. At the belly of some sort of a factory, fast asleep in his bed is an old man - the last person who is still dreaming. The technological means were found at the factory to extract the signals produced by his brain in order to then project his dreams onto a screen used for public screenings as a synthetic substitute for the lost privet faculty. The plot takes place during a single night when the old man is expected to pass away, and follows Sarah – a young woman that is found out to have been dreaming again. As a replacement for the dying old "Mr. Coma" is desperately sought after, Sarah is then worked through the various technological and symbolic induction procedures, into the role of eternal sleep.
Constantly grappling with the boundaries between reality and imagination and the way they impose each other, Andante is a surreal and unique cinematic experience. Every aspect of the film is an immersion into this ambiguous realm. The audience are forced to engage with Sarah‘s perspective: the blurring of her subconscious and conscious states as her fears and desires take form into reality.
Andante looks into a bleak world scarred by paranoia and fear. All beauty and warmth are gone. Like plague victims begging for scraps, the un-sleeping public flock to Mr Terrier‘s factory for comfort and alleviation of their pains. They need Sarah. She has the ability to provide them with a dreaming experience. Yet this gift is more like a curse that alienates her from the others.
Mr Terrier is inventor, preacher and performer. His live shows are a spellbinding rapture designed to induce a dreamlike experience. These shows are the closest thing the people - including Mr Terrier himself - get to the release and freedom they crave in dream. His own desperation becomes very much part of the show. With Orwellian spirit, Mr Terrier delights in the power of intruding in people‘s subconscious.
With a background strongly rooted in music, director Assaf Tager‘s innovative approach to cinema began with a musical score, that he originally wrote as an opera, from which the visual element draws its life. As collaboration had been an important aspect in much of his work, Assaf gathered a commune of actors, artists and musicians for the project. Everyone worked together to develop the script, build the sets and create the sound and atmosphere captured in the film.
Andante is characterised by its long flowing shots, much inspired by the techniques of theatre and silent film. In order to better integrate the musical aspect, actors performed music live during shooting. As well as using conventional instruments, sounds were created using the building itself, giving the factory its own organic presence. During filming the music and visual action were synchronised, via a stethoscope, to the walking pace of Sarah‘s heartbeat. Along with the set‘s dystopian design, this pace helps draw us further into her world, and the world she inhabits where no one dreams.
Tinstar Creative Pool Ltd is a film production company established in 2005.
Based in Tel Aviv, Tinstar‘s aim is to create a platform for artistic activity that nurtures and brings together outstanding and innovative local talent from the film and music realms. From the experience gained supporting a variety of local projects, Tinstar has expanded its interests to producing films of exceptional merit, unique in their concepts and techniques.
Assaf Tager is a musician and visual artist. His composition studies at The Royal Academy in London were part of a long-running career in music and the creative arts, which began at a very early age.
Spending much of his life travelling with his father provided Tager with the opportunity to see the world from different perspectives. This inspired him to challenge the musical structures he‘d learnt and to expand the possibilities of the various ways we engage with music. Tager‘s work became driven by collaboration, striving to expand his range of alternative forms of musical expression.
In the years leading up to Andante, Tager embarked on a variety of projects including a live performance piece in South Africa in which two string sections playing in two parallel train carriages pass each other on a mile stretch of track. And in America, he worked on a concept piece with New York artist Seth Tobokman based on the story about an imaginary bear.
A composer at heart, Tager moved into filmmaking as a means to give a visual narrative to a musical composition, seeing film as the platform to bring harmony to both ear and eye. Andante is the apex of much of his ideas and work. It began as a musical score for an opera, which he had composed around two central characters. Wanting to incorporate the collaborative elements that had driven much of his previous musical projects, the vision for the film shifted focus onto creating a community of artists, musicians and actors. As a group, themes from the writers Fernando Persoa, John Briggs and Sigmund Freud were discussed, which provoked ideas for the various dream sequences.
Tager‘s fascination with creating a unique experience in cinema was also greatly inspired by the German expressionist tradition. Most notably, all the effects used in Andante were specially designed and built to convey a dreamlike atmosphere. Amongst their constructions was a ‘dream machine’ consisting of a camera obscura positioned to capture the light from film projected into a black box.
Andante is Assaf Tager‘s first feature film and is his latest remarkable experiment that combines a visual and musical narrative.
| Sarah | Sarah Adler |
| Didi | David Fire |
| Mr. Terrier | Liron Levo |
| Palma | Nicole Veronica |
| Director & Writer | Assaf Tager |
| Producer | Lihu Roter |
| Co-producers | Ran Pasternak, Karen Belz |
| Camera | El'ad Debi |
| Editor | Zohar Sela |
| Music | Assaf Tager |
