Synopsis

SONG OF LIVES
music-documentary feature film

The Film is a documentary, yet is more just than that. It is about real music, real performers, real stories, though the dramatic composition of the storyline may give a feeling that the viewer is taken in the world of a dream-like ballade. The original way of story telling conveys the Film a dramaturgy which makes it different from the traditional documentaries.

CHAPTERS

On a rainy day, we are at a funeral. It is the funeral of a Gypsy first fiddler (prímás) well known in the village and in the entire region. Famous musicians from all over Transylvania gather together. Young and old musicians came to take farewell. At the funeral feast, that followed the burial, the musicians begin to play quietly as a tribute to the deceased. Nothing special, at least it seems so. Traditional Mezőség (region from Transylvania) set-up: first fiddler, second fiddler, contrabass. At the end all musicians are playing together and turn the sad event into a strange celebration; a celebration of Life.

We take a journey through the lives of some of the older musicians we see in the funeral band, we got to know that music is not only their profession, their job, but music is their own identity: it belongs to themselves as their, hands, or their heart, or their throat which sometimes they use to run down the brandy and other time for singing those wonderful songs.

László Kelemen one of the creators and main characters of the film, is walking at dawn alone, slowly on a village road. He returned to his homeland to find something, something he was afraid to lose. What urged him to return? Nostalgia, homesickness, preserving values?

The Film turns into a gentle road movie. It shifts from the funeral back into life. We follow the path of lives and of songs. Each performer, naturally, brings in a new story, a new fate and a new song. The performers who appear on the screen are younger and younger. After the Mezőség, we get into Moldova the land of the csángós (group of Hungarian speaking folks living in Romania in Moldova), into Székelyföld (the land of Szeklers), Máramaros and finally into Bihar, nearby the Hungarian border. Among the musicians we find not only Hungarians, but Gypsy and Romanian musicians as well.

We got to know the band of Budatelek, a mid-age generation group, the Group from Sármás set up by some young musicians, the Romanian Demi Ariton, Károly Moldován, the .Little Bleary-eyed. from Bánffyhunyad, János Zerkula from Gyimes Felsőlaka, the Muza family from Szászfenes, the viola band from Nagysármás, Dorel Codoban from Bihar, the Band from Szászcsávás, to mention only the most famous among them.

About fifteen-twenty people and as many individual lives, individual voices. Apparently they have nothing to do with each other, through music though they get even closer than blood brothers. They do it in the most natural way possible. The viewer has the sensation that this is a real family. But it is not, not in the traditional meaning of the word. They don.t speak each others. language either. And as usual, the viewers are wrong this time too. This is a family and it is not an ordinary family.