A talk about Australia

Very soon we'll be so lucky as to have Benjamin Speed at our school to talk about Australia, his work, his life. This is a short Bio: Benjamin Speed is an Australian musician and film composer. He spent his formative years as a vocalist and extreme stunts live performer in Australian band 'The New Pollutants', a fun loving, experimental and darkly zany hip-hop/electro duo influenced by 8-bit computer games and 1950's pop that performed at popular music festivals around Australia. In 2005, Benjamin devised and performed a highly successful live score to the 1927 silent film Metropolis, which had highlighted performances at large events such as the Commonwealth Games, The Sydney Opera House and MONA FOMA Festivals. The Metropolis Rescore was also updated to include the new footage found in Argentina in 2010. Since then, Benjamin has scored the multiple award winning film 'The Cat Piano', narrated by the famous Australian musician Nick Cave; the Australian Documentary Prize winning 'The Snowman', The Australian Film Institute Award winning ‘A Northern Town' and recently, '52 Tuesdays' which has just been selected for competition in the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. Benjamin has won one and been nominated for three Australian Screen Music Awards, won Best Score at the prized St Kilda Shorts Festival and was nominated for an American MPSE Golden Reel Award. Benjamin also holds Bachelors and Masters degrees in Australia from The Elder School of Music and the highly respected Australian Television and Radio School. He is a serving board member of the Australian Guild of Screen Composers and has had the films he has composed for play all over the world, including in Spain. Personally, he enjoys playing and watching football (soccer), seeing many films and laughing as regularly as possible. For more http://www.benjaminspeed.com/