Let me tell you about/ faces I see/ The stately, the rugged…/ some fierce lady eyes, some warm gentleman eyes/ but some eyes/ that can't look into mine
Vasquez — Julia Holter
I’m not usually bullish about being given the chance to interview people. That was until the opportunity to interview L.A. based musical genius Julia Holter came my way. I grabbed my copy of ‘Have You in My Wilderness’ (which I embarrassingly show Julia before we start the interview) and played it as I have weekly since I was first recommended it by a friend many years ago. When Julia toured Australia last time I bought tickets not even being aware of who I planned to take with me. In short, I’m a fan.
Julia has already scored films – perhaps most significantly her work with Eliza Hittman on Never Rarely Sometimes Always released in 2020. Julia brought her signature chamber pop meets complex instrumentation and composition to guide the audience to the unforgettable face of Sidney Flanigan as her character Autumn undertook what was a devastating journey to Brooklyn with her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) to get an abortion. Never Rarely Sometimes Always was a multiple prize winner and spoke to what was beginning to become a political issue once again, the reproductive rights of women in the United States.
In her project to score Carl Theodor Dreyer’s universally praised silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) Julia has once again tapped into a contemporary anxiety – that of the corruption of power via religious fervour. Holter’s first performance of her composition was in 2017, and this year she brings her work to the Melbourne International Film Festival on 11 & 12 August 2025.
I spoke with Julia about what attracted her to Dreyer and the differences between scoring a film where the director is alive, and the director is long gone.
You've done film soundtracks before such as Never Rarely Sometimes Always with Eliza Hittman. Can you tell me what it's like working to create a soundscape for a film in conjunction with its director?
Julia Holter: I’ve scored three films and a TV show not including The Passion of Joan of Arc, which is kind of different. In my experience, each time, it's been somewhat similar in that I've worked with a director who's really, who really is great to collaborate with.
I had done some scoring prior, but the people I've worked with, the directors I've worked with, were always open to letting me try things. There wasn't a lot of control exerted over my creativity. In some cases, there would be music that they put in as examples, but not so much.
When working with Eliza Hittman for Never Rarely Sometimes Always she didn’t put in any example music as she didn't want to, I guess, impose that kind of thing onto the score. So, she really let me create. She sent me the raw footage of the film, and that's how I started writing. That was so fun to work with.
I've always approached my work being a little outside of the film music world. Approached it sort of intuitively the way I write usually. I would have the picture up on the screen, and I improvise ideas according to the characters and having some kind of theme I associate with the characters. My experience has always been positive, whether it was with Eliza or for this Ben Younger’s boxing film Bleed for This, or the documentary, In My Own Time: A Portrait of Karen Dalton.
Working on the Dreyer masterpiece you don’t have anyone who can give you notes, and it is one of the most visually spectacular films ever made. For example, the way that the faces are filmed because it's a silent film – and silent film of that kind is acted through expression. Renée Jeanne Falconetti who plays Joan is just superlative. There's something about her eyes that transcends “acting”.
Working on creating something for one of the most important films ever made is quite the responsibility. How did you approach it?
JH: In some ways it's such a beautiful film that it makes my job easy, and there's also no director who's commenting. It's so stunning that I think it lends itself well to sound. There are a lot of people that have scored this film live. I think that the sheer amount of directions you can go with it is a little intimidating. It's also silent, which doesn't make it easier, necessarily: but it's like it is a unique quality in scoring dealing with silent films, because silence is different. Like, if you have silence in the score, which you I do; there is one moment of like complete silence and there's lots of moments of silence in my score, but there's, there's only one really long one. But mostly there is something happening all the time whether it be quiet or loud.
Vasquez, from ‘Have You in My Wilderness’, evokes a visual imagination of a semi-Western, has that incredible cinematic soundscape to it. And some of your later albums are much more instrumental focused. It seems to me that you're the perfect person to score a classic film because you understand the cinematic in all its sensorial aspects.
JH: A few years ago, I wrote an essay about connecting scoring Never Rarely Sometimes Always and The Passion of Joan of Arc., There's definitely a female thing going on with them. There are these close ups of their faces all the time (Autumn and Joan’s), and how both of those faces were so important for the music when I was making the music, and those faces inspired the score so much.
There are some artists who I find uniquely cinematic in their music. David Sylvian is one person, and you're another person where the music is transcending to visual imagination. It's not even necessarily the lyrics, although the lyrics help, but it's, it's the way that the soundscape kind of lifts you and little motifs that that are recognisable from a cinematic perspective.
When you're writing for one of the greatest films ever made. How much is Julia and how much is cinema history? How, how are you putting these things together?
JH: I thought a lot about Joan, the character when I was first coming up with the score. I also have always been kind of drawn to medieval stuff; medieval art or medieval music. What I ended up doing for the score was basically pulling chants, medieval chants, out to work with. One of them is a chant that supposedly the Joan of Arc army saying as they rode into Orléans.
There are different chants. So, there's like, this one, Ave Maria Stella, and then there's and then there's the one Te Deum loud, as it is a heraldry chant which they sing. There are many arrangements of these chants, the harmonisations of them. I was finding relevant melodies from Joan’s world. There's also a Canon I wrote from inspired by this medieval 14th century Canon.
It's a Canon that that they sing too. most of the score is using one of those three things at a time throughout the whole thing, or it's sometimes a little more ambient or whatever. I took some of the chants and we use the Latin. But then some of them like the one I just mentioned, the Canon, I set it to text from the film. So sometimes the singers are singing text from the film in English.
Actually, I honestly could change it to French, but there's a line: “Will I be with you tonight in paradise?” and Joan is singing this, I was kind of alternating, going between, like different states of Joan’s emotions. When Joan is hopeful, in a sense, kind of her only source of hope, is she will be with God eventually. I use like text from the film that are mostly from the perspective of Joan. It a lot of Joan’s words.
The final thing I'll add is that there is this really great Anne Carson essay from Float where she's writing about Joan of Arc, and she talks a lot about the language and how language functioned. In the trial to and how, how she like, how there was this like disconnect between what the judges and prosecutors were speaking in English, and Joan only knowing French. And there was this like way of, I think, manipulating the disconnect for their purposes.
It was predetermined that they were going to burn her. That was all there was to it.
JH: Carson wrote about the untranslatability of the sublime. The judges are trying to forcibly extricate some kind of material from Joan to manipulate into their narrative. And she stays true to the inexplicability of her spiritual experience, like she just gives vague statements, like Anne Carson mentions, like the light comes in the name of the voice.
I have the whole time throughout the score, I have this like, contact mic on my throat. Everything I'm singing is impossible to understand the words. It sort of blends with the trumpet, actually, but that's sort of my manifestation of this untranslatability, is that you don't hear the words. You just hear my melody, and I'm singing words the whole time, but you don't really hear my voice in the score in the same way as like I use it normally.
I'm so excited to be performing at MIFF. I love Melbourne, and it has a great music, art, and culture scene.
I thoroughly look forward to what you're going to do with The Passion of Joan of Arc, a beautiful film in itself, and I trust your score will further elevate it to the sublime.
JH: The players are amazing, and it's a lot of people I've played with. My bandmates, actually, Corey, the drummer, and Sarah Bell Reed, trumpet player, and my partner Tashi. The choir is going to be incredible. And the conductor is incredible. I feel so lucky.
We are lucky to have you. So, all in all, it's going to be a fantastic experience.