Opening Ceremony – 45th Brasilia Film Festival<\/p><\/div>\n

There was a\u00a0 screening of the hors concurs<\/em> film “A \u00daltima Esta\u00e7\u00e3o” [The Last Station (?)] by Marcio Curi. A co-production between Brazil and Lebanon. It is an emotional journey through Brazil and Lebanon. It traces back the steps of the Lebanese immigration to Brazil in the story of Tarik, an old immigrant who seeks to come to terms with the promises of his youth. It would be enough as a portrait of these two countries and all the beautiful locations where it takes place. Besides that there is the more specific issue of the meeting of cultures and there is also the universal issue of confronting the end of life and having to come to terms with frustration and deception, the inevitable shortcomings of youthful promises.<\/p>\n

We also had a presentation of themes from the soundtrack of the film by composer Patrick de Jongh backed by the Teatro Nacional Claudio Santoro Symphonic Orchestra, conducted by Maestro Cl\u00e1udio Cohen. It was a very pleasant performance and the audience seems to have connected to it. Yet, as a composer of orchestral music myself, I couldn’t help to think that it fell short somehow. The orchestra played for less than ten minutes, scarcely justifying the effort to bring all the musicians on stage and then it was over. Patrick himself who is a virtuoso violin player was left to sing and play some weak strummed pizzicato, while his bow remained unused. Some fast runs and high note climaxes would have brought the audience down, but the presentation ended before the music could reach a conceivable climax. There are many variables in an event like this, I suppose there were time constraints that could have been managed into a more satisfying result. When I see so many good musicians on stage with a nice orchestral blend, I want to hear them for at least 20min, or else there seems to be a dis-balance in the time necessary to set up and the performance time itself. My. Jongh’s orchestrations were especially effective in the percussion and low strings.<\/p>\n

Overall there was a great atmosphere, a celebration among friends. There were some anecdotal moments, I’ll leave them for a later post. I will try to see all 14 features (8 documentaries and 6 fiction movies) plus the 34 shorts and animations\u2026 let’s see how well I’ll manage that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

45th Festival de Bras\u00edlia do Cinema Brasileiro – Opening night Yesterday was the opening ceremony of the Festival. It is very special for me to be here. I am taking part in the Festival with the documentary “Parece que Existo” by Mario Salimon. The film has, at it’s main focus, my formative years as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2090","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-brazilian-music","7":"czr-hentry"},"yoast_head":"\n