Bewogen koper
Netherlands,
1993, 106 min
Shown in 1999
CREDITS
- dir
-
Johan van der Keuken
- prod
-
Pieter van Huijstee, Harry de Winter
- scr
-
Johan van de Keuken, Rob Boonzajer Flaes
- cam
-
Johan van der Keuken
- editor
-
Jan Dop, Johan van der Keuken
- source
-
ldéale Audience, 6, rue de I\'Agent Bailly, 75009 Paris, France. FAX: 33-1-5320-1401
-
COMMENTS
Johan van der Keuken appeared in person to receive the 1999 recipient of the Persistence of Vision Award.
OTHER
From its opening shot of a man descending a Nepalese mountainside with a sewing machine on his back, Brass Unbound never ceases to surprise. The film—a polyphonic journey exploring the transformation of brass bands across four cultures—is a fusion of van der Keuken’s passion for music with his search for links between seemingly disparate parts of the world. Although they originally accompanied colonizing European armies and proselytizing Christian churches, brass bands were ultimately appropriated by those they came to conquer. In weddings, funerals, military exercises and spirit ceremonies, Brass Unbound resounds with the melodies and rhythms that have evolved in Nepal, Surinam, the Minahassa Peninsula in Indonesia and finally Ghana. Yet van der Keuken’s film is much more than just a music documentary: He improvises with his camera as though riffing on an instrument. Punctuating scenes of rehearsals, interviews and performances are scenes from the musicians’ day jobs—tailors, instrument makers, hospital workers—and lyrical visual sequences such as the movement of feet on the pavements of Katmandu or a shot of a large tuba traveling mysteriously through Surinamese neighborhoods. We gain insight into the worlds from which the music springs and the passions of the filmmaker.
—Irina Leimbacher
FACTOID #109
Though the film had won two major awards at the Berlin Film Festival, John Cassavetes’ Love Streams was pulled from the SFIFF program at the last minute by the distributor. According to Cassavetes, MGM/UA was concerned that showing Streams, which the director himself proclaimed ’a crazy film,’ at the SFIFF might hurt the film’s box office upon wider release
