Music

Colour, 35 mm
Slovak Republic, Germany, 2007, 99 min
IP – International premiere
Section: East of the West - Films in Competition

Synopsis

The film is set in a small Slovak town in the late 1970s and early 1980s and tells the story of young Martin, who loves music, especially jazz. His in-laws are irritated by his practice sessions on the saxophone: jazz leaves them cold. Even Martin’s colleagues from the water purification plant where he works as a service engineer are unresponsive to his playing and, in their sneaky reports about him, they describe him as someone who only appreciates Western music. Martin starts earning a bit on the side in a local band which performs mostly middle-of-the-road stuff. Surprisingly, he finds his interest in more discriminating forms of self-expression is shared by the liberal Anča, who enchants him to the extent that he is even willing to sacrifice his family to be with her. Juraj Nvota’s film is another adaptation of a prose work by Peter Pištanek (e.g. Rivers of Babylon, 1998, dir. Vlado Balco). More than simply a tale about the pursuit of a musical career, the film offers an intimate account of a man to whom music offers the chance to find personal freedom.

About the director

Juraj Nvota (b. 1954, Bratislava), stage, television and film director and also actor, graduated in stage direction from Bratislava’s Academy of Performing Arts (1977) and then worked in Trnava, Martin and Bratislava. He regularly directs productions at Studio Ypsilon in Prague. As an associate professor (1999), he lectures at the drama and puppet-theatre faculty of Bratislava’s Academy of Performing Arts. He has appeared in the films of Dušan Hanák, Martin Šulík and other directors, and he became famous in the role of postman Jakub in Hanák’s film The Rosy Dreams (1976). After experience working on documentaries and TV programmes he made his first feature film in 2002, Cruel Joys (Kruté radosti), a poetic story about adolescence which competed at Karlovy Vary the following year.