Drummers and gods
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Drummers and gods |
| Country of production | Brazil , Germany |
| original language | Portuguese |
| Publishing year | 2001 |
| length | 59 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Georg Brintrup |
| script | Georg Brintrup, Mario Di Desidero |
| production | Luciana Machado de Vasconcelos, Rudolf Heinemann WDR Georg Brintrup, TVE Bahia Lichtspiel Filmproduktion GmbH |
| music |
Aldo Brizzi , Arnaldo Antunes , Carlinhos Brown |
| camera | Joaquim Waldyr Dal Moro Filho, Jorge Alvis |
| cut | Georg Brintrup |
| occupation | |
| |
Drummers and Gods ( Portuguese: Tambores e Deuses ) is a German-Brazilian film essay by Georg Brintrup from 2001.
action
The Brazilian street boy Antônio wakes up early in the morning on the beach in Salvador (Bahia) . At sunrise he has a biblical enlightenment: God created light even before he created the sun and moon. How does that work? The light can only mean the spirit that suddenly lit up in people. But before he created the light (the spirit), God said: Let there be light! In front of the light there was the voice of God, a sound, a big bang, a thunder like on a drum. Antônio concludes from this that the spirit, human thinking, would not exist at all without this original sound.
He meets Valdyr, the blind black man who can see with his ears. The two become friends. Valdyr knows that thinking has made man lose his naturalness. Everything has to be described with words, with meaning. Nothing can be taken for granted to him anymore. As a result, man is divided within himself. That made him very sad. And for as long as he can remember, he has wanted to be at peace with himself again, to become a whole person. But how? He has to communicate with the gods.
In search of the original sound, the two roam through “Black Rome”, as the city of Salvador (Bahia) is also called because of its cultural, Afro-religious significance. They meet different drummers and learn that the drum is the oldest human instrument used to communicate with the gods. The drum calls the gods. These descend and connect with the people. God and man become one whole again, one sound. Understanding and reason no longer play a role. Someone who only understands the world with his mind only experiences it halfway. And then there is a danger: He thinks he can rule the world with his head! Valdyr asks Antônio to explore the bottom of this sound as if it were the bottom of the sea where total silence reigns.
In the loud carnival bustle, where nothing follows the laws of reason, but rather an emotional order, Antônio feels a strange tension between head and stomach that does not allow him to calm down. Valdyr shows him that it is precisely this tension that enables him to become a sound himself, as with the drum with the taut head.
At the seaside they encounter the "tristeza", the sadness, the primal sensation of the Brazilians. Valdyr tells Antônio that he should never chase the "tristeza" away, it will disappear by itself if he only lets himself go. In the end, Antônio finds out that he has become an instrument himself.
background
“When people began to think, that was the moment when the greatest, most monstrous of all natural disasters began.” This sentence and other theses from the work “South American Meditations” by the Baltic German philosopher Hermann Graf Keyserling form the basis of the filmic essay. Stephan Zweig's book Brazil, A Country of the Future has also influenced the view of the authors of the film essay on the country of Brazil.
The Italian composer Aldo Brizzi is the musical director of the film. His album “Brizzi do Brazil” with songs that he wrote for Brazilian and Portuguese singers was created while the film was being made. Parts of these songs were dramatically included in the plot of the film by Georg Brintrup. For example the song "Mistero di Afrodite", which is sung by Caetano Veloso.
Reviews
“The cinematic gaze of a traveler who wants to learn more about the power of music, which plays such an important role in the cultural shaping of the Bahian identity.
The film presents an astute vision of Brazil, both critical and rational. The focus is not only on the Brazilian nature, but also on a universal, human one. But that would say too little about the film. This is not just an anthropological study mixed with philosophical and sociological ideas, which alone would not be sufficient as a prerequisite for an artistic work. The film takes a European look at our country, which is guided by the magic of music, dance and the landscape, and is also inspired by the openness of our language and the earth-bound rites of the locals. "
“The German filmmaker Georg Brintrup has been dealing with the interrelationships between sound and image in his works for a number of years. Author of the films ' Symphonia Colonialis ' (1991) and 'O trem caipira' (1994) on Brazilian music, he is now deepening the subject in his new film 'Tambores e Deuses' (Drummers and Gods), which he is shooting in Salvador. (...) In the considerable list of his works for television, cinema and radio, Brintrup places the greatest value on works that focus on music and people's relationship to sound, noises and hearing. 'A sound is stronger than a picture can ever be.' the filmmaker justifies his attitude, which could seem contradictory for someone who actually depends on seeing. Meanwhile, he has set himself the task of building bridges from one language to another, from sound to image, from hearing to seeing. "
Web links
- Drummers and gods in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Presentation of the film
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bruno Barba: La Roma negra di Jorge Amado , book series: Le città letterarie, publisher: Unicopli, 2004, ISBN 978-8840009667 .
- ^ Hermann Graf Keyserling : South American Meditations . Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Berlin / Stuttgart 1932 ( online ).
- ^ Stefan Zweig : Brazil, a country of the future . Bermann-Fischer, Stockholm 1941.
- ↑ Cyntia Nogueira: No princípio, existia apenas o som ... (In the beginning there was only the sound ...) in the Correio da Bahia , Folha da Bahia, of March 7, 2001
- ↑ brizzi do brasil. aldobrizzi.net. Retrieved April 29, 2017.
- ^ Music: Passion and Glory of Brizzi of Brazil. brazzil.com. Retrieved April 29, 2017.