The Silence Before Bach

Die Stille vor Bach

(Spain, 2007, 102 mins)

35mm

Producer: Pere Portabella
Screenwriters: Xavier Albertí, Pere Portabella, Carles Santos
Cinematographer: Tomàs Pladevall
Editor: Òskar Gómez
Cast: Christian Brembeck, Alex Brendemuhl, Feodor Atkine, Daniel Ligorio, Georg C. Biller, Georgina Cardona, Franz Schuchart

A blind piano tuner, a harmonica-playing truck driver, and a tap-dancing horse are just three of the unlikely bedfellows in Catalan director Pere Portabella’s playful, dazzlingly original meditation on the great German composer’s influence across the centuries and the blurred borders of the new Europe. Elsewhere, a mysteriously self-propelled player piano rolls about a gallery floor, and every seat on a subway car is occupied by professional cellists. Bach himself even appears, briefly, in scenes that suggest a low-fi bio-pic, as does Felix Mendelssohn, discovering the sheet music for the "St. Matthew's Passion" concealed in an unassuming piece of butcher’s wrap. And so Portabella—a veteran producer and politician who has also managed to create a wonderfully idiosyncratic body of genre-bending avant-garde films—hopscotches merrily across the centuries with a lightness of touch and freedom of form that recalls the late films of Portugal’s Manoel de Oliveira. A rare treat for fans of cinema and classical music alike.

For ticketing information please phone 1-866-345-6337 or email boxoffice@filmindependent.org