CANNES 2005 Out of competition
Istanbul's music flies high
Contradiction is Istanbul's watchword. Istanbul, an old and modern town at the same time, poor and rich, facing Europe but firmly rooted In the East. On the Bosphore, which divides the continent In two separate parts, and on this contradiction, the Istanbul's "sound", the music that Fatih Akin a filmmaker of Turkish extraction born In Hamburg thirty-two years ago wanted to capture In his documentary Crossing The Bridge [+see also:
trailer
film profile], flies high.
Presented out of competition, the film flies over the Turkish town with Alexander Hacke, the bass guitarist from the group Einsturzende Neubauten, in Istanbul for Akin Head-On 's soundtrack, Golden Bear at the 2004 Berlin Film Festival. Hacke as eager as the phonic Philip of Lisbon Story by Wim Wenders, organises the jam session with local musicians and records everything on his computer.
In the end, a thousand years of musical tradition is summed up, a crossover in which traditional musicians take part, playing with old instruments, rappers and breakers, street musicians and light music star.
It creates one single sound, one single language: worrying political texts by CEZA rappers, to master Erkin Koray's rock, to Kurdish Aynur whose music is filled with spirituality marked by tragedy, until the unexpected qualities of the superstar Orhan Gencebay, who also acted in dozens of very popular films In Turkey.
This is probably too much for our ears, our eyes and our heart. But Fatih Akin intends only one thing: to demonstrate that contradiction means abundance, in order that the different cultures come together and create something which can fly over the frontiers, so that different musical culture speak to one and other as should people do.
Produced by the German company Corazón International, the film will be distributed In Germany as from June, 9 by Pictorion Pictures/NFP. The producer sold it in Turkey at R-Film and a few days before the Cannes Film Festival, the international seller Bavaria Film International sold it to MK2 in order to distribute it in France.
(Translated from Italian)
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