Three paths intersect in this first film by Leandro Koch and Paloma Schnachmann. First the voice of someone appears who wants to tell us a love story, that is, the story of a scammer, or of something that is dying. That someone with a woman’s voice is one that Jews prefer to refer to as “That One,” so as not to say his name. Little by little we will understand that he is telling us an old fable about a gravedigger’s assistant, a young woman eager for knowledge, a mule and some other things. This fable occasionally coincides with the story we see on screen, where a young man invents himself as a klezmer music documentary filmmaker to make a clarinetist eager for knowledge fall in love with him. He also claims to be a Torah scholar, but he only memorizes some texts by Baruch Spinoza with which he dazzles the girl and offends her father-in-law, who is a rabbi to make matters worse. In this case, there is more than one mule. But that invented character is what takes us to the third path.
It passes through Austria, Ukraine, Romania and Moldova. In Austria the character finds funds for his project (amusingly, Koch and Schachmann managed to finance this film there too). And in small villages in other countries he finds some old and very old musicians, who play at gatherings, in their homes or in their backyards, but there are no purely klezmer bands. The tradition was diluted, it was mixed with other sources, and there are those who say that it died, because of the Holocaust, which devastated the people, but also Zionism, which imposed Hebrew, despising Yiddish, and time, which erases everything. . Will that rich and delicious music be reborn? Could be. Throughout the story we hear, among others, the Lerner-Moguilevsky duo, the Tócsoi Banda, the Covaci, Vasile Rus, a postman violinist, and his daughter, and the New Yorker Bob Cohen, son of a Hungarian and a Moldovan mother, learning from the old to transmit later its treasures in folk music festivals and recording houses. And we enjoyed about five versions of the “Bobober” march for weddings, to whose sounds the bride, the guests and other drunks dance in the street. Beautiful tradition, which has not yet been lost.
“Inside me I am dancing”/“The Klezmer Project” (Argentina-Austria, 2023). Dir.: L. Koch and P. Schachmann. Int.: L. Koch, P. Schachmann, P. Sneh, L. Rinner.
Source: Ambito
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
