Interviews

2015 Sundance Trading Card Series: #11. Heather McIntosh (Z for Zachariah)

Published on February 5, 2015

Eric Lavallee: Name me three of your favorite “2014 discoveries”…
Heather McIntosh: MaddAddam Trilogy, Margaret Atwood. Volumina for Organ, György Ligeti. Mind Brains (Orange Twin Records)

Lavallee: In Z for Zachariah, Craig Zobel goes from a “Great World of Sound” (pardon the pun) to nothingness. How did you research dystopia, lifeless scapes and survivalism?
McIntosh: The score fits somewhere between pastoral and experimental. Research, I studied a lot of contemporary organ scores, like the Ligeti one above (not that the score really went that far out).

Lavallee: This is your second outing with Craig, your previous collaboration was the cringe worthy essay on victimization. In terms of instrument selection, what did you sprinkle onto Z?
McIntosh: For Compliance, it was cello driven. For Z for Zachariah, Cello is still there, but there is a larger chamber ensemble sound, pump organ, piano, choral ensemble, French horn, and a as always a sprinkling of electronic ambience.

Lavallee: We heart film scores. We’d like to know what are some overlooked or forgotten film scores that are worth a listen/discovering?
McIntosh: The Conversation, David Shire. The Hired hand, Bruce Langhorne. Anything by Toru Takemitsu (Dodes’kaden is a goodie). Solaris, Eduard Artemiev. Andrzej Korzynski, Secret Enigma (Compilation of his film works and other rare gems).

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).