IDFA: Music

Every year, it's the same story. Or song in this case.
There are shocking, moving, unbelievable and inspiring documentaries, but the best are still the music documentaries. I remember To Tulsa and Back, a road movie about J.J. Cale in 2005, The Power of Song about folk singer Peete Seeger in 2007, The Audition of last year about young singers that participate in an opera contest and of course, I'm your Man, the film about Leonard Cohen that literary changed my life.

This year too, IDFA presented some music surprises that made me forget about all the bad things in this world.
Staring with Kinshasa Symphony, a film about an amateur orchestra in Congos capital city, a country that is torn by wars and crimes. This film doesn't show all of that. This film shows how music brings people together. The Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste started fifteen years ago and now exists of two hundred musicians and singers. We meet a few of them, who talk about their instrument, about rehearsing seperatly (by listening to a cd) and about the role of classical music in an African society. The film ends with a performance of the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, and when the singers sing, in German, All people will be brothers, you realise that it's the post colonial mind of the Europeans that is surprised by the combination of people, location and music. The performers are performing their music. That's it.








Music brings people together, as Socalled in The Socalled Movie also proofs. Socalled is a Canadian artist whose versatility can only be showed in eighteen short films. This musician invented klezmerhop and klezmerfunk, the magician shows several tricks that he learned by endless rehearsals, and the film maker takes over a part of the documentary himself.
Socalled made me happy. He's someone who seems to be afraid of nothing and who can bring people together who otherwise never would have met. A lot of inspiration!