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Muzikanten voor het leven

Documentary, 2007, 90 min.

A gypsy without his music is not really a gypsy. In this personal quest for the last Sinti and Roma, filmmaker Bob Entrop follows three gypsy bands. With the Basily's, he travels to Prague, where they receive a warm welcome as a Dutch jazz band. Young Paulus Schäfer and his Gipsy Band reach a height in their career in a joint performance with the world-famous Rosenberg Trio. And with Roger, a Swiss musician/composer who has descended on the Netherlands, he pays a visit to his in-laws in Germany, where Roger sings a moving duet with his demented father-in-law. To all three of the bands, Django Reinhardt is the unsurpassed maestro.
In the variegated editing, the film romps from interview to interview and from one performance to the next. Nostalgia and realism alternate in the candid conversations. Playing almost continually, the protagonists render virtuoso solos, as well as an unfinished composition: Requiem for Auschwitz. As long as a gypsy plays music, he lives (on).

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