Difficult

Difficult focuses on an all female music band named DIFFICULT. This video uses a documentary approach relating the musical practice of the band within the safe space of the rehearsal studio.
The band is composed of untrained musicians; they embrace on stage and in their composition their amateurism by making the cracks, hesitations and mistakes visible to the audience which destabilizes a traditional understanding of music making and virtuosity. This video looks at how nuanced and unassertive modes of being can carry a powerful and subversive potential; in DIFFICULT's case I perceive it as an empowering feminist gesture.
The footages are mainly composed of the bands developing process of composing songs. The songs are composed through improvisation and jamming, the lyrics are glimpses of their personal communal experiences. Focusing on their musical process unfolding in front of the camera, the viewer is invited to look at a vulnerable but generative situation. Non-verbal communication, musical elements, empathy and affect are intertwined, revealing many complexities that the resulting music track won’t ever expose.



HD video, 46'46", 2021

With: Tracy Hanna, Eothen Stearn and Kari Robertson
Color grading: Marta Hryniuk

Supported by Stichting Niemeijer Fonds