Coincidence? The two Dutch documentaries in the main competition of the IDFA documentary festival both explore what music can mean to people. Two films that also complement each other perfectly - one starts from the perspective of the listener, the other from the musician. Ramon Gieling outlines in About Canto the profound influence that Simeon ten Holt's Canto Ostinato on the lives of a number of people. Frank Scheffer followed Iranian composer and conductor Nader Mashayekhi as he tried to introduce Mahler in Tehran. Both films premiered on Saturday.
Gieling fits in About Canto roughly the same method he used for Johan Cruijff en un momento dado (2004), in which Spaniards sing of their love for the Dutch footballer, and Joaquin Sabina (2008), in which the Spanish singer is honoured by friends and fans. Also About Canto is one such group portrait. A performance of the famous piece for four pianos in Groningen railway station loosely acts as a framework, within which people from very different walks of life recount the often completely unexpected and crushing impact the piece had on them. These range from exorcising the fear and pain of childbirth to overcoming depression. One scientist even sees similarities with the behaviour of motorists at a roundabout. It is a deceptively simple, moving film in which, thankfully, little is theorised or explained. Canto Ostinato is like love. Very occasionally, it can radically change a life.
Also seemingly simple but at least as impressive is Scheffer's Gozaran - Time Passing, in which the filmmaker mixes the Iranian composer Mashayekhi's musings with close-ups of his students, mostly headscarfed young women who throw themselves at Mahler with a combination of seriousness, allotment and fun. Scheffer, who became widely known for his portraits of modern composers, including Varèse, shows how Mashayeki, who lived and worked in Austria for a long time, leaves for Tehran in 2006 with a suitcase full of dreams, only to return four years later with a suitcase full of shards. Very nice is also how, through these reflections on music and poetry, there is a kind of political thread running anyway, without ever being called that. But the feeling young people must have when they see a wonderful new world open up through music is close to that other hope for change.
Leo Bankersen
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