Shandurai and the piano player

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Movie
German title Shanduraï and the piano player
Original title L'assedio / Besieged
Country of production Italy , UK
original language English , Italian
Publishing year 1998
length 93 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Bernardo Bertolucci
script Bernardo Bertolucci
Clare Peploe
production Massimo Cortesi
music Alessio Vlad
camera Fabio Cianchetti
cut Jacopo Quadri
occupation

Shanduraï and the piano player is a feature film by Bernardo Bertolucci from 1998. The intimate play, produced by the Italian television RAI , takes place in an old, worn-out Roman palazzo on the Spanish Steps and below the Santa Trinità dei Monti church . While it was still in production, he decided to expand the television film from the original fifty to ninety minutes and thus make it accessible to the cinema. He wrote the script together with his wife Clare Peploe, who grew up in Africa, based on the short story The Siege by James Lasdun . Bertolucci describes it as a “piece of chamber music for the cinema.” At first, no German distributor was interested in this film until it was released in German cinemas on March 3, 2006 through Alamode Film . It was first broadcast on German-speaking television on December 12, 2006 on 3sat .

action

Thandie Newton, 2008
Spanish Steps in Rome.
The filming location was behind the left corner house.
Spanish Steps from above, on the far right the Palazzo of Jason Kinsky
Between the palm trees: Kinsky s Palazzo and the Metro entrance in Piazza di Spagna

After the aerial recordings over the crater of an extinct volcano on a glittering coast, the music of an African singer can be heard. The griot crouches on the ground under a large tree and accompanies himself on an African lyre and foot rattle . His lyrics with the refrain "Africa" ​​are not translated "to emphasize the musicality". In later dream sequences he and the leading actress Shanduraï meet. The young nurse Shanduraï lives in a nameless African dictatorship and works in a clinic for war-disabled children. One day her husband Winston, a politically committed village teacher, is arrested, taken away and kicked by a soldier in front of her eyes .

In the next few scenes she is in summery Rome , where she works as a cleaning lady and kitchen helper for the English pianist Jason Kinsky. She lives in the maid's room in his old palazzo , which Kinsky inherited from his aunt and which is apparently secluded just a side house away on the much-visited Spanish Steps . Kinsky lives withdrawn, practices a lot of piano, gives piano lessons and struggles with composing piano music. In addition to her work, Shanduraï diligently studies human medicine and spends her free time with her gay and spirited fellow student Agostino. Kinsky soon falls in love with the pretty and cheerful African. She reacts angrily and negatively to his awkward advances with small gifts that he does not give personally. In a dream scene she tears the posters of an African dictator from the walls, the last one shows the face of Kinsky. When he finally confesses his love to her in a stormy way, she is insecure and feels cornered. Kinsky confirms his love by repeatedly declaring that he will do everything for her. Suddenly she yells at him: "Get ... my husband ... out of jail." Kinsky is shocked, sobered up, looking for support and turning away. When he asked why he was in prison, she bursts into sobs.

In fact, Kinsky is secretly trying to get a release and establishing contacts with business people and through African priests. He photographs the inventory of his apartment to the sound of John Coltrane's jazz classic " My favorite things ". Little by little, precious works of art and then the somewhat worn furniture from the palazzo disappear. As before, he treats his housekeeper politely and distantly. When Shanduraï is vacuuming once, Kinsky is composing a slow passage. He is inspired by the relatively even movement of the vacuum cleaner and looking at her skin. He changes to a fast, repetitive staccato rhythm, which she picks up with an involuntary nod of the head, angrily catches herself doing it, stops, nods again and smiles a little.

One day she is informed in a letter that her husband is actually going to go to court, only now does she bring this into connection with Kinsky. As she does so, she looks at a sheet of wind blown and sunlit hung to dry, through which she can see shadows. She opens her suitcase in which she keeps her souvenirs of her homeland. Underneath is her wedding ring, which she picks up but then puts back again. At the end, the Steinway wing is also lifted out of the building. Finally her husband is released and announces his arrival in Rome by letter. Shanduraï wants to write a thank you letter to Kinsky, after many discarded versions she is limited to Dear Mr Kinsky I love you . The night before, she goes to Kinsky's bedroom, who came home drunk to put her letter on his bedside table. At first she only takes off his shoes, but then she lies down next to him. At dawn they are woken up by the doorbell; it is their husband who persistently presses the doorbell. At first it doesn't open. Shanduraï gently holds Kinsky with him (see movie poster). But then she leaves the bed with a guilty conscience. The camera stays on the half-empty bed.

background

Bertolucci has lived in London since 1981 and temporarily returned to Italy for these recordings. He wrote the screenplay with his British wife Clare Peploe, a film actress, screenwriter and director who was born in Tanzania , grew up in Kenya and speaks Swahili as her mother tongue . They were inspired by the short story Besieged by the British writer James Lasdun, who has his story set in London between an amateur English musician and a chambermaid from Colombia . Clare Peploe originally wanted to film the short story, but then had to stop the project due to a lack of financial support. Bertolucci and Peploe expanded the plot with a short prologue in Africa, which should "give roots" to the story. The shooting lasted 32 days in Rome and four days in Africa. The budget was around $ 3 million. Most of the camera recordings were made with a digital steadicam and, for close-ups, with a smaller handheld camera , which gives the action greater agility and intensity.

Bertolucci said of this film: “I wanted to draw a sensitive and prophetic fantasy about the future face of Rome. Racial mixing is still new to Italy, but it is accelerating, and I wanted to share the dizziness with these two strangers who live in a city that enchants them. ”Regarding the production conditions, he said:“ I found the joy of creation in complete Freedom again. In fact, I had no restrictions, internal printing over $ 30 million in production. I was able to devote myself to more experimental film studies by opening up to the new technologies. "

Bertolucci spent several years preparing for the challenge of "not just making a film, but also a cinema" with the new digital cameras and image processing. He wanted to do more than just create special effects to explore the real possibilities of digital film. He liked the idea of ​​making a largely wordless film and compared this to the origins of the film, which began as a silent film .

While he used to do a decidedly political and discursive cinema, this film documents the general disappointment with the lack of reforms after 1989. The political draws back here to the “raw confrontation, without words, racially, socially, politically, with a poetic projection the external reality and the appearance of this collision. [...] Reality, in any form and only through its very existence, does not cease to be political. "Regarding the leading actor David Thewlis , the screenwriter Clare Peploe said:" David was physically very, very good for the role. He's kind of awkward and unable to express himself. We needed this to keep him from being too obviously romantic. I mean, here is this young man in a big house playing lovely music and he could be very easy to fall in love with. But David doesn't let him be too attractive, so Thandie Newton has to develop in order to love him. David is also very intelligent, very shy and difficult to understand. But in such a way that you really want to get to know him. Kinsky also has these characteristics. "

According to Tullio Kezich, Gabriele d'Annunzio wrote his novel Il piacere ( Lust  ) in 1888 in the same building, which is now located between a subway entrance and the Spanish Steps on Piazza di Spagna . In the film reviews, Bertolucci's film sets in “gloomy interiors” of upper-class apartments were often referred to , as in The Last Tango in Paris (1972) and later in The Dreamers (2003). The recordings in Africa took place in Nairobi and the surrounding area.

About half of the film music, contrary to the expectations of the German film title, does not consist of classical music, but of short recordings of international hits from African music by Salif Keïta ( Sina ), Ali Farka Touré with Ry Cooder ( Diaraby ), Papa Wemba ( Le Voyageur ) and others. The film was first presented at the Venice Film Festival in 1998 , then at the Toronto International Film Festival and, after being distributed in a few US cinemas, finally sold on DVD in the spring of 1999.

reception

Approving

Bertolucci's film has received many and extremely different interpretations like hardly any other work of his. This variety of reactions is due, on the one hand, to the sometimes noticed complexity of the imagery and to the very often mentioned rarity of the dialogues that stand in the way of a literary film reception. On the other hand, the presented intercultural contrast also led to extremely different views. In the opinion of film scholar Yosefa Loshitzky, the question of whether Bertolucci has made a racist and paternalistic film or not is decided by the accuracy and care of the person looking (" close reading "). Loshitzky analyzed individual scenes and motifs in detail in 2010 and rejects the accusation of racism against the film as superficial. Rather, the film conveys a consciously ambivalent message ("[t] he film's ambigous message").

In the US film portal Rotten Tomatoes , 74% of 49 film critics rated the film largely positive. The New York Times film critic Stephen Holden was impressed by Bertolucci's film adaptation, as the two main actors do not talk their feelings to death, but rather let their intense feelings speak only in actions and music. It is a deliberately romantic exploration of the non-verbal connections between people whose love is awakening. Therefore, he does not miss a list of character traits and personality profiles. This “anti-psychological perspective” of the script, which leaves a lot of space, is very “refreshing”. The film also received clear approval in the Frankfurter Rundschau by Ulrike Rechel, who rates the work as “strong and exciting”. Bertolucci lets pictures speak instead of dialogue and tells visually instead of just decorating. Frank Olbert highlights the visual contrasts and syntheses in his laudatory review in the Kölner Stadtanzeiger . Above all, Bertolucci stages “space, light, colors”, “after the light in Africa the gloom of the palazzo, after the vastness the narrowness of the apartment”. Only the light connects the protagonists, who stayed at a distance almost to the end. That is why Bertolucci “painted a film” and “brought paintings into cinematic movement”.

In the Italian press, the film was almost universally positive. Tullio Kezich describes it in the Corriere della Sera as a small masterpiece. Michele Anselmi at L'Unità considers the film to be the best of Bertolucci's recent works, a film received in a state of grace. He sees in it a sophisticated web of grotesque accelerations and emotional slowdowns, of lost perspectives and large cracks. At Shanduraï you can see the unbending pride of African migrant women, the bond with their African roots and the fear of letting go. In La Stampa , Lietta Tornabuoni praises the beauty and sophistication of the film, the wise skill of the director, the tension in viewing the actors, and a sense of captivity and freedom.

Irene Bignardi says in La Repubblica that the film is a good example of how one can dissolve the boundaries between cinema and television for the big screen with little money and a lot of taste.

The French film portal AlloCiné rated the ratings of thirteen French press articles with around three out of five possible stars as predominantly positive. Olivier Père says in the culture magazine Les Inrockuptibles that Bertolucci is not a superficial filmmaker, which he was often accused of because he stroked with the camera. Bertolucci is more at home with a small melodrama than with a large mural , so he loves to concentrate on motifs and details that can be both visual and psychological. It is better to speak of haute couture instead of decorative art ("art décoratif"). Colors and movement come into their own here so openly and clearly that this art can be compared with that of Wong Kar-wai and Pasolini . The political dimension in the film Shanduraï is "zero" because of the lack of definition of a concrete reality, and therefore it is a fable , but Bertolucci is a filmmaker of fundamental honesty ("foncière honnêteté").

Claudio España of the Argentine newspaper La Nación believes that Bertolucci is a master of visual perception and enables the arts to advance, above all in order to obtain unusual meanings in the audiovisual field and to maintain a sovereign dominance of the image over all other forms of expression. He also considers the soundtrack of the film to be diverse and rich in content and auditory metaphors. Isabela Boscov from the Brazilian weekly Veja emphasizes the complex visual structure of the film, Bertolucci does not use the images and the actors to manipulate the emotions of the audience, but as elements of a mosaic that is only connected when it is seen in its entirety becomes.

draw

In his neutral FAZ review, Michael Althen is “happy” to have seen this “small film”, although he does not consider it “a really great work”. Althen notices Bertolucci's renewed departure from the “spirit of 1968 ”, where everything private was reinterpreted politically. "[F] earlier the tatters [would] have flown with him, but now all political implications are caught in a delicately germinating network of relationships that thrives entirely on hints." It is up to Newton to "give the film the right expression" , because unfortunately Thewlis "apparently took Marlon Brando as a model and plays in a similar manner, but without his presence". He compares the large spiral staircase of the building with a snail in which “the residents crawl as soon as the world gets too much for them.” The film review in the Spiegel is succinct: “Bertolucci vividly describes how erotic and musical obsessions reinforce one another , but often loses sight of the credibility of the story. "

Rejecting

In the German arts section , negative and ambivalent opinions about the film predominate . Many rejections include the moral requirement that Bertolucci have an obligation to properly consider the previous colonial history between Europe and Africa. The film did not fulfill Europe's historical debt, or only inadequately. The plot of an intercultural love story as well as the image and sound design take a back seat in these reviews.

Hanns-Georg Rodek von der Welt thinks, “The perspective is that Kinsky who controls with a glance.” Rodek then asks fundamental questions, including whether Kinsky wants to buy his wife with his generosity, and whether it is “historical justice”, “When European wealth, which has been acquired at the expense of Africa, flows back to the black continent?” “Good questions”, of which Bertolucci “answered not a single one”. For Thomas Klingenmaier in the Stuttgarter Zeitung , the film is “sometimes elegant, but mostly tasteful” and “sunk into pathos”. Bertolucci tries to "mirror" the "rapprochement of two continents" with the main actors. The film gives him "the uncomfortable feeling" as if Africa had to serve the Europeans once again, this time being to forgive its colonial guilt. Alexandra Wach from film-dienst found that it is a television production . “The character drawing leaves a lot to be desired. Bertolucci relies too much on the effect of the music, which he also uses in a rather schematic way. ”The characters remained“ prisoners of a powerless directorial concept full of hints and inaccuracies that rob them of all credibility. ”

Charlotte Becker writes in the Bonner General-Anzeiger that Thewlis is playing with “a somnambulistic grin with a melancholy fluffy look” and Newton appears “with swaying hips and a chronically offended expression”. After all, beautiful, sensual, but unfortunately purely illustrative pictures are possible. As he did thirty years ago, Bertolucci is still looking for “the provocation” of “bourgeois salons” with a “ mixture of sex, society and politics”. Since then he has “only imperceptibly varied his stylistic devices”. Furthermore, she criticizes "a lot" of "gaps" in the film - how Shanduraï got to Rome, the personal background of Kinsky - and allows them to apply to the short story. Bert Rebhandl , on the other hand, regrets in the taz that Bertolucci left psychoanalysis behind "and is now occasionally becoming a little indulgent". The director “always” shows the “essential things hidden” and their “resolution, so that his film constantly reveals all the secrets. The art of encryption ”would be“ no longer his business ”. Rebhandl interprets Shanduraï's rhythmic vacuuming (from 47th min.) And Kinsky's subsequent change in his improvisation from a slow rhythm to a staccato (from 48th min.) As a dialogue taken up passively by Shanduraï, and for him this goes to the “limit of the tasteless ”. In the eyes of Annette Stiekele at Hamburger Abendblatt , Bertolucci is even risking his reputation that the film would have been better left "in the drawer". The film suffers from “folklore with a western outlook” and a “mountain of role clichés”, so it is a shame about the “excellent actors” and the “pleasant narrative style”.

literature

  • Bruce Sklarew: Piano Lessons. Interview with Bernardo Bertolucci. In: Fabien S. Gérard, Thomas Jefferson Kline, Bruce H. Sklarew (eds.): Bernardo Bertolucci. Interviews. University Press of Mississippi, 2000, ISBN 1-57806-205-5 , pp. 258-268, excerpt from Google Books .
  • Jonathan Rosenbaum: Back in Style. Bertolucci's Besieged . In: Jonathan Rosenbaum: Essential cinema. On the necessity of film canons. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2004, ISBN 0-8018-7840-3 , pp. 250-256, excerpts from Google Books.
  • Yosefa Loshitzky: The white continent is dark. Migration and miscegenation in Bernardo Bertolucci's Besieged (1998). In: Yosefa Loshitzky, Screening Strangers. Migration and Diaspora in Contemporary European Cinema , Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2010, paperback, ISBN 978-0-253-22182-7 , pp. 77-93, excerpts from Google Books.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e Michael Althen : The poetry of private employment. In: FAZ , March 2, 2005, No. 51, p. 37, abbreviated original version .
  2. ^ A b c Claudio España: El cine está mutando. In: La Nación , September 28, 1998
  3. a b Clare Peploe at IMDb
  4. a b cinema in brief. In: Der Spiegel , No. 9 of February 28, 2005, p. 151.
  5. Volker Behrens: Encounters with Bernardo Bertolucci. In: Hamburger Abendblatt , December 12, 2006.
  6. ^ Claudio España: El cine está mutando. In: La Nación , September 28, 1998. (Originally: "... no poner subtítulos," de manera que la musicalidad se eleve por sobre todo "".)
  7. ↑ Movie poster
  8. Loshitzky, The white continent is dark, p. 79.
  9. in the original : "cameriera" = chambermaid, in: Tullio Kezich , Corriere della Sera , February 6, 1999
  10. ^ Brigitte Baudin: "Shanduraï" La sonate de chambre de Bernardo Bertolucci. In: Le Figaro , March 2, 1999. (Original: “Le sujet m'a été apporté par ma femme, Clare Peploe, explique Bernardo Bertolucci. C'est une nouvelle de James Lasdun qu'elle avait adaptée sans succès pour le cinéma, faute de financement. »)
  11. a b Brigitte Baudin: "Shanduraï" La sonate de chambre de Bernardo Bertolucci. In: Le Figaro , March 2, 1999. (Original: "Nous avons tourné trente-deux jours à Rome et quatre jours en Afrique pour donner un passé, des racines à Shanduraï.")
  12. ^ A b c d Italian press review of L'assedio by Mario Ferrero on tiscali.it , February 1999
  13. Mariuccia Ciotta in Il Manifesto , February 3, 1999 on L'assedio
  14. Michel Pascal: Bertolucci Roma.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.lepoint.fr   In: Le Point , March 6, 1999. (Original: “Je voulais signer une fantaisie sentimentale et prophétique sur le futur visage de Rome, explique Bertolucci. Le métissage est encore nouveau pour l'Italie, mais il s'accélère, et je voulais faire partager le vertige de ces deux étrangers livrés à une ville qui les ensorcelle. »)
  15. ^ Brigitte Baudin: "Shanduraï" La sonate de chambre de Bernardo Bertolucci. In: Le Figaro , March 2, 1999. (In the original: “J'ai retrouvé le bonheur de la création, en toute liberté. En effet, je n'avais plus les contraintes, la pression inhérente à une production de plus de 30 millions de dollars. Je pouvais m'adonner à des recherches cinématographiques plus expérimentales en m'ouvrant aux technologies nouvelles. ")
  16. ^ Claudio España: El cine está mutando. In: La Nación , September 28, 1998. (Originally: "Hoy hay muchas películas, pero hay poco cine ....") Translation: "Today there are many films, but little cinema ..."
  17. ^ Claudio España: El cine está mutando. In: La Nación , September 28, 1998. (Original: “Por ejemplo, hasta 1989, la realidad era política y la política inspiraba todo urgentemente. Luego, la política perdió urgencia y hoy no cuenta con la aceptación de la gente. En los sesenta y setenta hubo sobredosis de política. "Hoy nos vamos recuperando del desaliento excitado en que nos dejó aquella frágil urgencia de vivir montado a la batalla. En" Besieged "regreso a la política ... pero sólo por el argument: tenemos casa antigua con un inglés joven encerrado en ella y apasionado por la música y por su colección de obras de arte; una chica misteriosa está cuidando su casa.Hay un enfrentamiento crudo, sin palabras, racial, social y político, con su proyección po la realidad exterior y con la expresión de esa colisión [...] La realidad, en cualquiera de sus formas y sólo por serlo, no puede dejar de ser política. ")
  18. Production notes for Besieged , Yahoo (Original: "David was physically very, very good for the role," continues Clare Peploe. "He is sort of awkward and unable to express himself. We needed that to keep him from being too obviously romantic . I mean here's this young guy in a big house playing gorgeous music and he could be very easy to fall in love with. But David doesn't let him be too attractive, so that Thandie Newton has to grow to love him. David is also extremely intelligent, very shy and difficult to get to know - but in that way that you really want to get to know him. Kinsky also has these qualities. ")
  19. Gabriele D'Annunzio : Lust. Afterword by Albert Gier . Translated by Claudia Denzler. Reclam , Ditzingen 1995, 423 pp., ISBN 978-3-15-009346-7
  20. Official website of Yosefa Loshitzky ( Memento of the original from July 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at the University of East London (UEL), as of July 17, 2011 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.uel.ac.uk
  21. Loshitzky, The white continent is dark, pp. 82f. Originally : And yet, as we shall see | below, a close reading of the cinematic text reveals it to be imbued with both celebration and anxiety about miscenigenation. (Translation: And yet, as we shall see later, a careful reading of the cinematic text reveals that it is steeped in both celebration and fear of racial mixing.)
  22. Loshitzky, The white continent is dark, p. 85, online source .
  23. Shandurai and the piano player at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
  24. Stephen Holden : A Love That Soars Above Words. In: New York Times , May 21, 1999. (Originally: "a purposefully romantic exploration of the nonverbal connections between people that can blossom into love" ... "a list of character traits or [...] a personality profile". )
  25. Ulrike Rechel: Passion without words. In: Frankfurter Rundschau , March 3, 2005, p. 7.
  26. Frank Olbert: "Shandurai and the piano player": Rome under the African sun. In: Kölner Stadtanzeiger , March 3, 2005.
  27. Tullio Kezich in Corriere della Sera , February 6, 1999. ( In the original : "piccolo capolavoro".)
  28. Michele Anselmi in L'Unità , March 2, 1999. ( Original : “il suo migliore tra i recenti”… “un film concepito in stato di grazia”… “la sofisticata tessitura: fatta di accelerazioni farsesche e rallentamenti emotivi, di prospettive destrutturate e squarci abbaglianti "..." la fierezza indomabile, il legame con le radici africane, il timore di lasciarsi andare ".)
  29. Lietta Tornabuoni in La Stampa , March 2, 1999. ( In the original : "la bellezza e raffinatezza del film, la sapiente bravura del regista, la tensione nella contemplazione degli attori, il senso di prigionia e di libertà".)
  30. Irene Bignardi in La Repubblica , February 6, 1999. ( Originally : “con pochi soldi e molto gusto si possono dissolvere i confini tra il cinema per la tv e il grande cinema”.)
  31. ^ Shandurai> Critiques Press on AlloCiné, 1999
  32. Olivier Père in Les Inrockuptibles , January 1, 1999. ( In the original : “Bertolucci n'est pas un cinéaste superficiel, c'est un cinéaste à la caméra caressante. Nettement plus à l'aise dans le mélodrame miniature que dans la fresque , Bertolucci le styliste aime se concentrer sur des motifs et des détails qui peuvent être aussi bien plastiques que psychologiques. Et plutôt que d'art décoratif, on préférera parler de haute couture à propos de son cinéma, qui en vient même à adapter dans ce film, de façon avouée et très visible, les couleurs et les mouvements des tendances cinématographiques du moment.Toujours à l'affût des modes modernistes, il s'entiche d'effets à la Wong Kar-wai, qui pourraient être ridicules mais qui sont presque touchants, lorsqu'on se rappelle que Pasolini, maître de Bertolucci, accélérait les images et les sons bien avant le nouveau cinéma asiatique. ")
  33. Olivier Père in Les Inrockuptibles , January 1, 1999. ( In the original : “On pourra finalement objecter que la dimension politique dans Shanduraï est nulle car elle ne renvoie à aucune réalité définie; Shanduraï est effectivement un conte, une fable pudique, qui se tient à l'écart de l'autoroute de la demagogie et de l'abjection. Nous aimons le dernier film de Bertolucci parce que son gût de la beauté des choses et des femmes ne se sépare jamais d'une foncière honnêteté de cinéaste. " )
  34. ^ Claudio España: El cine está mutando. In: La Nación , September 28, 1998. (In the original: “Bertolucci es un maestro de la concepción plástica y en permitirse el avance de unas artes sobre las otras para obtener significados insólitos y un soberano dominio de la images por encima de cualquier otra expresión, dentro del audiovisualismo. ")
  35. ^ Claudio España: El cine está mutando. In: La Nación , September 28, 1998. (In the original: "múltiple y rica en contenidos y en metáforas auditivas.")
  36. Isabela Boscov: Quando menos é mais. Bertolucci filma about caso de amor para lá de econômico. In: Veja, July 12, 2000. (Originally: "Bertolucci nicht usa as imagens e os atores para manipular os sentimentos da platéia, mas como elementos de um mosaico, que só tem nexo quando visto por inteiro.")
  37. Hanns-Georg Rodek : Bach meets Afro-Pop. In: Die Welt , March 3, 2005.
  38. Thomas Klingenmaier: Europe advertises Africa. ( Memento from July 7, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) In: Stuttgarter Zeitung , March 3, 2005, p. 36.
  39. Alexandra Wach: Shandurai and the piano player . In: film-dienst , No. 5, 2005, ( online article only for subscribers ( memento of the original from December 19, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / film-dienst.kim-info.de
  40. Charlotte Becker: Why Rome? ( Memento of the original from July 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.general-anzeiger-bonn.de archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: General-Anzeiger , April 14, 2005.
  41. Bert Rebhandl : Love takes time. In: taz , December 12, 2006, p. 18.
  42. Annette Stiekele: Lonely artist saves poor African cleaning lady. In: Hamburger Abendblatt , March 3, 2005.