CinéSchool presents “Bernie Krause, A Life with The Great Animal Orchestra”
©Masha Karpoukhina for Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain
By Nathalie Charles, Program manager, CinéSchool
On the occasion of the exhibition The Great Animal Orchestra at Exploratorium in San Francisco (Until October 15, 2023), CinéSchool is pleased to present the 2021 documentary film, Bernie Krause, A Life with The Great Animal Orchestra, directed by French filmmaker Vincent Tricon in partnership with Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.
For more than fifty years, American musician and soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause has been recording the sounds of nature and animals around the world. On the occasion of the exhibition The Great Animal Orchestra at Exploratorium in San Francisco with the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain (Until October 15, 2023), students registered in the CinéSchool program will be able to watch a documentary about his work online for free from October 2-9, 2023, and will have access to educational resources created specifically for this project. Students will also be able to participate in an interactive discussion on Flip following the screening with the film’s director and the Fondation Cartier team.
Register for the screening now!
Bernie Krause, A Life with The Great Animal Orchestra
Directed by Vincent Tricon and produced by Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain
2021, 37 min., in English with French subtitles; recommended for ages 11+
For more than fifty years, American musician and “soundscape ecologist” Bernie Krause has traveled the world recording the sounds of animals, terrestrial and marine species, in their natural habitats. Bernie sends us an urgent message about the climate emergency and the fragility of the wild world. The film delves into the world of a passionate man who was the first to hear the song of the world, and who contends that if we want to preserve it, we must learn to listen.
Themes: animal, biodiversity, bioacoustics, biophony, spectrograms, climate change, environment, music, nature, soundscape
Discover The Great Animal Orchestra
Over the course of nearly 50 years, Bernie Krause collected more than 5,000 hours of recordings of natural environments, including at least 15,000 terrestrial and marine species from around the world. These soundscapes invite us into an immersive audio-visual experience to listen to the world’s biodiversity and the collective biophony across the world.
This installation is a collaboration between Bernie Krause and United Visual Artists. It was commissioned in 2016 by Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain and is now part of its permanent collection. The website The Great Animal Orchestra invites you to be the conductor of nature’s vast musical ensemble, explore landscape ecology, and become aware of the urgent need to preserve the splendors of the animal world.
How to participate
This screening is presented as part of CinéSchool, a free French film initiative for young audiences, presented by Villa Albertine, the French Embassy, and FACE Foundation. CinéSchool is a program reserved for French teachers in the US (French schools, French immersion and dual-language programs, Alliances Francaises, French as a Foreign Language and Heritage Language, and FLAM programs).
To register for Bernie Krause, A Life with The Great Animal Orchestra, fill in the form available here.
Any questions? Contact nathalie.charles@villa-albertine.org
In partnership with
Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain
The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, created in 1984 by the Maison Cartier, is a private cultural institution whose mission is to reveal artists from all cultural geographies and to promote all fields of contemporary artistic creation to the international public through a program of temporary exhibitions, live performances, and conversations.
The Fondation Cartier’s singular artistic program explores a wide array of creative fields from visual and performing arts to architecture, film, design, fashion, philosophy, and the sciences. For four decades, the Fondation Cartier has been instrumental in revealing the talent of some of the greatest contemporary artists and has established its museum spaces as a platform where artists and scientists can meet and create projects to address major issues of today’s world. As part of its ongoing observation of the relationship between human beings and nature, the Fondation Cartier travels the world, partnering with major art institutions and engaging new audiences to discover the works of contemporary artists and be challenged by their perspectives.
At the end of 2025, the Fondation Cartier will leave Boulevard Raspail and will open its new, permanent exhibition space on Place du Palais-Royal in Paris. This new building, conceived by the renowned architect Jean Nouvel, marks a new chapter in the history of the Fondation Cartier, which positions itself as a significant actor in the ongoing urban and cultural development of the city of Paris, as well as on the global contemporary art scene.
