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WORK SONG – AS TIME GOES BY

Hajnal Németh, “Work Song – As Time Goes By”, 2016, musical film thematising employment and unemployment through a fictional audition situation, full HD, stereo, 55’
Video still by István Imreh

„Work Song – As Time Goes By” (2016) is a musical film about a fictional casting situation, featuring two original songs composed specially for the film and several adaptations, with the underlying theme of employment and unemployment.

The film features an open mic audition, where performers competing in a particular genre stage their own production, adapting their act to real or perceived expectations. We see a fictitious casting situation, the purpose of which – the production for which the casting is being held – remains unknown all along. However, in the introduction of each performance, the specific role for which the candidate is applying is always mentioned. In fact, these roles correspond to the different roles that can be taken in society in relation to occupation – including, as options, the unemployed and the homeless. Since the casting process constitutes the film itself, the roles applied for are actually already filled by the candidates’ productions.

The thirteen scenes of the film consist of thirteen consecutive acts, reduced to a single location, and shown in a montage of two static camera positions. Only the performers appear in the footage, with a few shots of the jury.

One scene that breaks the sequence of auditions, the system of the process, is the entrance of the jury into the casting studio, which the „out of character” camera operator transforms into a scene staging situation by giving the jury members absurd instructions, choreographing their arrival in the room.

The successive parts – the various songs, poems and proses – do not cohere into a single story, but they do address the same issues: the limitations and possibilities, lifestyles and perspectives of working and non-working people. Two opposite approaches are confronted: existence through work as an exclusive system of relations, and the condition of unemployment as a valid default position. These two counter-examples are demonstrated by the consistently contradictory lyrics of the two key songs in the film: “Work Song” and “Absolution”.

The other songs are in part covers and adaptations, held together by a composition that underscores the entire piece with variations on a single theme: the “Workless Song”.

The main titles of the thirteen scenes – with an encore:

“THE PASSIVE VOICE, THE DIRECTING VOICE, THE OBVIOUS VOICE, THE SKEPTIC VOICE, THE MISSING VOICE, THE SUITABLE VOICE, THE SELECTOR VOICE, THE RESIGNED VOICE, THE LATE VOICE, THE PRESENT VOICE, THE INVISIBLE VOICE, ANOTHER VOICE, THE FREE VOICE AND THE CONTROLLED VOLUME”

Related interview by Helene Romakin

Extract from the video:

“Work Song – As Time Goes By”, 2016
Musical film, full HD, stereo, 55′
Written and directed by Hajnal Németh
The songs „Work Song” and “Absolution” were composed by Brian Ledwidge Flynn.
Featuring: Gábor Altorjay, Desney Bailey, Knut Berger, Timothy Beutler, Polina Borissova, Christian Bringzen, Gidon Carmel, Matthew Dal Din, István Dankó, Francesco De Rosa, Lea Draeger, Gergely Eortzen Nagy, Simon Fagan, Júlia Koffler, Gergely László, Lilla von Puttkamer, Sára Stenczer, Árpád Széll and Albert Orgon
Camera: Imreh István
Sound: Fabien Leseure
Translations: Christina Kunze, Dániel Sipos
Production management: Sára Stenczer

Filmed and recorded at Studio P4 Berlin
Funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Berlin
Further supported by the Allianz Kulturstiftung