Bettina Ehrhardt

What drives the director and curator of a major music festival? For more than a quarter of a century, Michael Haefliger led the Lucerne Festival. Around the turn of the millennium, he reshaped it together with Claudio Abbado and Pierre Boulez, and later with Riccardo Chailly, Wolfgang Rihm, and Dieter Ammann and his festival team. In the last summer of his directorship, my co-author Graziella Contratto and I accompanied Michael Haefliger for this film.

One hundred years of new departures, discoveries, risks, and challenges for the ears of the audience. The film tells the century-long history of the Donaueschingen Music Days (1921-2021), the world's first festival devoted to contemporary music, and still the most significant today.

'On Being Human as Praxis' is the world premiere of a performance by the English singer Elaine Mitchener, recorded at the Donaueschingen Music Days in October 2020. It was the only performance we were able to film that year; shortly afterwards, the festival was cancelled due to the pandemic. The performance takes its title from Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis, a critical genealogy of works by the Jamaican feminist writer and cultural theorist, edited by Katherine McKittrick.