Reviewing Ibiida Lahaa by Bart Hawkins and Craig Padilla, I need to separate the artistic from the technical. This cinematic triumph shines in the light of both, but for me it is the artistry of this masterwork that sets it apart from previous attempts by filmmakers to tie music to visuals. Hawkins and Padilla have successfully married vision to sound in a way I have never seen done before. The cinematography is amazing on it’s own, but made more so by the subtle and organic purity of the score.  Together, the sum exceeds the value of the parts in solo.

     The visuals consist of Northern California revealed in splendor, fading smoothly between landscapes and cloud studies, to micro-scapes of water and fire that delight and suspend. Sometimes films in this genre are spoiled by over-use of editing trickery and special effects. Here we see manipulations of time and color that enhance the scenery but don’t take away from it. Effects here serve to reveal more of the inherent beauty of Northern California than only ordinary light and time allow. Each frame could be an oil painting on its own. Above all, the visual imagery is about the time and place, but presented in such a way as to allow the viewer to enter an unseen aspect. Hawkins explains that the title is taken from the Wintu language, the tongue of the indigenous people of the landscapes portrayed, and is loosely translated as “going into trance.” The title is an apt one, as viewing it I was captivated by the feeling that I had just spent an hour in a fabulous art museum. In that same way, my patterns of thought seemed temporarily altered by the sensory overload of exposure to artistic vision of high quality. Repeated viewing achieved the same satisfying result. A lingering aesthetic trance brought on by overwhelming artistic beauty.

     As for the music, this is not the first time Padilla has drawn upon far Northern California’s Wintu heritage in looking for inspiration. One of his earlier works, “Wintu Magic” remains a favorite. In Ibiida Lahaa we see the visual masterwork matched by the sonic excellence that Padilla has worked so long to achieve. Indeed, as a native of the area in which the visuals were taken, he has cultivated an indigenous music style of his own that utterly compliments this film. Just as the visuals are spellbinding and continually interesting, the music attaches to the scenery in a way that adds to the appreciation without trying to outshine it. As with the best of scores, you come away with no feeling that the music wasn’t inherently an integrated part of the experience, inseparable from the whole. While this new indigenous music may stand on its own, I can’t imagine it without the film, or the film without the score in perfect balance.

     Technically speaking, I stand in awe of this effort. If you think back on films that tied music to visuals in a more or less abstract you can find a number of successes. Numbering among the successes for me would be Fantasia or Chronos. Both those works brought viewers a different perspective of music tied to imagery. Many other works in this small genre have fallen short of full artistic achievement, with some seeming to be little more than screen savers run to music. In any case, we see that previously entire teams of people have been harnessed to produce these films. Here there are just the two artists, from concept to production. Perhaps that is why this film succeeds on so many levels. Here we have only two people, masters of their craft, working together to bring their artistic vision to fruition. Perhaps the purity here is that there is no dilution through committee and teamwork, but instead masterwork collaboration that has such powerful impact.

     The new technical tools that make this feat possible can often be as much hindrance as help. True artists use the tools available to achieve the vision, whereas too often you see results where the tools themselves, the effects and the manipulations, become the focus of the project. Together these two artists have used the computer-based filmmaking abilities to render their vision to reality without succumbing to the technical. The results are an organic and rich experience allowing us to see and hear exactly as the artists intended.