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RETURN TO Natalia Brzozowska Music

This longest film ever made by Brzozowska was her first full-blown documentary venture into the world of music. A connoisseur piece, this short combines shots from different classical music concerts, where we observe performers alongside their audiences. The camera often pauses on the facial expressions of the listeners, trying to analyse their emotional state.

Music

  • Muzyka
  • 1948
  • dir. Natalia Brzozowska
  • 12 min 9 sec

This longest film ever made by Brzozowska was her first full-blown documentary venture into the world of music. A connoisseur piece, this short combines shots from different classical music concerts, where we observe performers alongside their audiences. The camera often pauses on the facial expressions of the listeners, trying to analyse their emotional state.

The film isn’t merely a visual report on various musical events. These stay mostly unnamed. Brzozowska ponders on the relationship between music and human existence, by intercutting between faces of grown-up people and young children’s expressions and movements when they are exposed to the sound of instruments and voices of different singers. The smooth sounds become their life force.

As the film progresses, it becomes a meditation on the parallel between human existence and the sound of music. The camera patiently observes a boy learning to play the piano and a girl attempting to master a simple violin tune.

The chain of such subtle visual impressions concludes with a brief return to close-ups of the listeners’ faces, which dissolve into one another, tapping into musical vibration, to eventually mould into static wooden sculptures that are presented in tracking shots. When the music stops, human vitality also fades away.

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