Anthonie Tonnon - Cinematographer

THIS SHOW IS STRICTLY 18+

Taite Music Prize-winning New Zealand songwriter Anthonie Tonnon presents his immersive new live show, Cinematographer.

Three years in the making, Cinematographer combines live electronic music, cinematic storytelling and visual design into an immersive performance. Featuring visual DJing by Erica Sklenars, videography by Theo Taylor, styling by Karlya Smith and design by Daniel Alexander, the show sees Tonnon playing the roles of DJ, singer, documentarian and revolutionary lecturer.

The show explores two timelines: the Situationist International in France and Italy during the 1960s, and Whanganui, New Zealand at the turn of the millennium – a mysterious, forgotten city where a new battle is being waged against what Guy Debord famously called The Society of the Spectacle.

Swapping his guitar for a vocoder, and transforming two Synthstrom Deluges into honorary turntables, Tonnon connects these seemingly distant worlds through the musical language of turn-of-the-millennium dance culture.

"Cinematographer is part film, part francophile performance lecture, part disco club set," says Tonnon. "It's a world that we've built for this new music, exploring some newfound passions – the French avant-garde, cinema, urban politics of the 1960s, turn-of-the-millennium dance culture and documentary films, and the glorious, mystifying city of Whanganui."

The ambitious audiovisual performance introduces an entirely new body of work developed with Tonnon's band and longtime producer Jonathan Pearce (The Beths). The new single and video "Executive Assistant" offers the first glimpse into this new world – Tonnon's first new music in three years.