Balkan Melodie

Balkan Melodie

By Stefan Schwietert

  • Genre: Documentary
  • Release Date: 2014-04-05
  • Advisory Rating: G
  • Runtime: 1h 31min
  • Director: Stefan Schwietert
  • iTunes Price: USD 1.99
  • iTunes Rent Price: USD 2.99

Description

The film tells the story of Marcel and Catherine Cellier, who through their own love story, discovered a shared lifelong passion for the music of Eastern Europe. In the midst of the Cold War, the pair sets borders aside, collects and documents, in somewhat adventurous ways, sounds that were up until then completely unknown in the west. With innumerable radio transmissions and millions of sold records, Marcel Cellier makes this collected music internationally known and paves the way to success for musicians like the Romanian pan-flute virtuoso Gheorghe Zamfir and the legendary Bulgarian female vocal choir "Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares ". On the tracks of the Celliers, the film travels to Eastern Europe to again find the protagonists from that time and let the wealth of their music live again. In the contrast of meetings from back then and today, a piece of contemporary history is experienced, which tells about the changes of people and their surroundings as well as the immortality of timeless music.

Reviews

  • great music and people, but...

    3
    By bobnorth
    It is so tiresome to listen to whiney gripes about communism. Communism restored folk music, not to mention all classical art and all folk art. The people paid for it. That kind of thing doesn’t just happen… in UK you pay your radio tax. Art costs money, it does not go very well with capitalism. The film is about the brilliant guy who recorded the music and shared it with the world… very much as Lomax did with so many folk arts. This docu is wonderful for the music. I loved it. I discovered Romanian, Moldovan, Byelorussian, Russian and Ukrainian music as I worked to end the cold war. The movie bored me even though I loved the flowers and attractive people and landscapes.

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