Sharing Days: Film "O Brother, Where Art Thou?", with introduction by music scientist Michiel Kamp

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

The film O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), starring George Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson, is a satirical comedy-drama set in rural Mississippi in 1937.  Music plays a crucial role in the film. Renowned country and folk musicians collaborated on the soundtrack and it won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2002. Musicologist Michiel Kamp will tell you more about the music of this special feel-good film before the screening.

The film is in English with Dutch subtitles.

O Brother Where Art Thou

Three escaped convicts are searching for a hidden treasure while a sheriff relentlessly pursues them. The story incorporates social features of the American South and is loosely based on Homer's Greek epic poem The Odyssey. Country and folk musicians dubbed into the film include John Hartford, Alison Krauss, Dan Tyminski, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Ralph Stanley, Chris Sharp and Patty Loveless. The film was one of the first to make extensive use of digital colour correction to give the film an autumnal sepia tone.

Michiel Kamp

Michiel Kamp is a music scientist in the Media and Cultural Studies Department of the Faculty of Humanities. His research attempts to categorise and characterise the different ways in which soundtracks work, and delves into hermeneutic and semiotic approaches to music in video games and related audiovisual media such as films and virtual reality. He is also interested in music philosophical topics, such as the aesthetics of background music. Michiel will introduce the film and there will be an opportunity for questions afterwards.