Stefan Schwietert
Imagine waking up tomorrow and all music has disappeared. Just like that. What will remain when it is all gone: CDs, iPods, instruments?
What Swiss director Stefan Schweitert did for accordion music and for yodeling (Accordion Tribe, Cinequest, 2005; Echoes of Home, Cinequest 2008) he now does for traditional Balkan music. This wonderful film is also a love story – and a door into a world of musical wonders.
What does a baby's cry have in common with the echo of a mountain yodler, and what connects the head tone of a Tuvin nomad with the stage show of a vocal artist? The answer is: THE VOICE. Against a background of powerful alpine vistas and modern city landscapes, "heimatklänge" enters the wondrous sonic world of three exceptional Swiss vocal artists. Their universe of sound extends far beyond what we would describe as singing. In their engagement with local and foreign traditions, the powerful mountain landscape becomes a stage as do the landscapes and sonic backdrops of modern life.
Five highly original musicians from different countries form the Accordion Tribe. Together they aim to reinforce the original power of the long disdained instrument. The film follows the energetic soundscapes and their performers on a journey through Europe. An extraordinarily intensive documentary on the communicative, connecting power of music.
The retired life in Florida rescued, the Epstein brothers do again what they do best and have practiced for a lifetime music. A Tickle in the Heart captures the past, present, and future of the remarkable Epstein brothers - Max, Julie and Willie - Klezmer music legends on a joyous international comeback tour. This is a cinematic party with three of the funniest men in the show business. The Epsteins are natural performers, and their sense of life, music and family as they tour through places they love.
This film illuminates the way in which the cultural climate of "Red Vienna" affected the subsequent years leading up to the present and examines the mark left on the lives of Jura Soyfer's contemporaries.
