I don't usually write about films, but there is a film I want to see, and I think many readers will as well.
Briefly, there is a remarkable documentary film in the works Following The Ninth: In The Footsteps of Beethoven’s Final Symphony. I just saw the trailer and was blown away by what I learned about how powerful and meaningful that music has been for people around the world. This film is clearly a labor of love by producer, writer and director Kerry Candaele, who has made socially conscious documentaries, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, and Iraq For Sale for Brave New Films, as well as A League of Their Own, that was later turned into a Hollywood film starring Geena Davis, Tom Hanks and Madonna.
Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra says the work "Seems to express most completely what human beings are struggling for. Its a battle cry for humanity. It is the hymn of possibility."
"This piece gets into your bloodstream," says conductor George Mathew, "and then changes who you are." This piece has always been part of the sound track of my life, and I can't disagree. But I am gob smacked about what this piece has meant for people all over the world. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when I think about it. And I am glad the trailer below helped me to do just that.
Here are some highlights from director Candaele:
A NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR
I fell in love with the Ninth not as a film maker, but as a human being. The music came to me first, and I lived with the Ninth for years before I discovered that the symphony had a grand history in our time. Following The Ninth tells the story of Beethoven and his struggle to create his final symphony, and the resonance of the Ninth as it traveled across the globe, inspiring, challenging, and repairing people as it went, for over 180 years. Here are some highlights of the film.
* When the Chinese military invaded Tienanmen Square in 1989, the students there were playing the Ode To Joy as their anthem of liberation. In the same year, Leonard Bernstein conducted the Ninth at the Berlin Wall, where people were in the process of dismantling this symbol of oppression of the human will for freedom.
*In Chile women marched in the streets under the threat of death during the Pinochet dictatorship, singing their version of the Ninth (Himno a la Alegria The Hymn of Happiness) at the walls of torture prisons. Inside, men and women without hope heard them and knew they were not alone.
* In Japan the Ninth has become a symbol of rejuvenation and national celebration. Performed hundreds of times in December, the Ninth (Daiku) often features 10,000 singers in the chorus, people who have struggled for six months to master the German choral section that Beethoven used for the first time in the history of symphonic writing. And Japan is the only place where one can choose the Ninth in a karaoke room.
* In London the pop/punk artist Billy Bragg (the Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger of England) has been charged with writing an English version of the Ninth’s “Ode To Joy” for our time. And, his version of the Ninth will be performed before the Queen by the London Philharmonic. High meets low, pop sensibility meets the Monarchy in Bragg’s new version of the world’s most famous symphonic music. Bragg will change forever the way the Ninth will be received by a younger generation who will embrace the first “rock star” of the nineteenth century.