A Mountain Musical Eva Eckert, Austria, 2009, 52 minutes
Friday, May 14 | 9:00pm | Vancity Theatre
In Eva Eckert’s stunningly beautiful and frequently hilarious film, the Austrian tradition of yodeling is carried on in the warbling of an increasingly aged population. The myths and toil of an industrial landscape told through the music of miners, coal burners, mountain farmers and factory workers give voice to a truly unique portrait of the Eisenwurzen region and its fascinating inhabitants. They do things differently in Austria, it would appear. A few examples: a group of men and women head out into the woods, chop down a tree, saw it into pieces, and then burst into song. Or a very elderly man sings about being a poacher — “Who sneaks through the forest at night? His gun clamped tightly in his hand?” When interrupted occasionally by his equally ancient wife, he snaps “Shut up!” without missing a beat.
The industrial nature of Eisenwurzen has informed the character of the people who live there. Each job, be it mining or foundry work, gave rise to a particular type of song. “The source of a singer’s pride was actually the work,” explains a former steelworker. But as one elderly woman, who learned songs from the Nazis, croons from her bed, musical stylings arrived in the strangest of fashions. Carrying on the tradition of Stefan Schwietert’s Echoes of Home, A Mountain Musical similarly uncovers the roots of folk music. Intimately tied to patterns of work and home, singing was a means to cope with the daily labour of rural life. Deeply idiosyncratic, if not downright weird in places, and possessing a wonderful quixotic spirit, A Mountain Musical is brimming with drama, colour and a certain type of homely pageantry.
Preceded by: Leavenworth, WA Hannes Lang, Germany, 2008, 29 minutes
A loopy lovely portrait of a town that reinvented itself as a Bavarian alpine village, complete with lederhosen and cuckoo clocks. As carefully and artfully composed as the town itself, Hannes Lang’s short film is a series of long, slow pans that add a certain majestic heft to the proceedings. Set against the beauty of the Cascade Mountains, Leavenworth’s alternate identity has attracted visitors from around the globe.
