Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

FILM

Biopic about jazz legend ‘Django’ to open Berlin film festival

The Berlin film festival will open next month with the premiere of a biopic about Gypsy-jazz great Django Reinhardt focused on his family's persecution by the Nazis, organisers said Wednesday.

Published: 4 January 2017 14:57 CET
Biopic about jazz legend 'Django' to open Berlin film festival
Reda Kateb as Django Reinhardt in Django. Photo: DPA

The French production, “Django”, marks the directorial debut of Etienne Comar, a screenwriter and producer behind hits such as “Of Gods and Men” and “My King” and co-producer of the award-winning film about radical Islam “Timbuktu”.

“Django” will compete for the Golden Bear top prize at the Berlinale, the first major European film festival of the year, running February 9-19.

Reinhardt, a virtuoso guitarist and composer who shot to global renown with his delicate melodies, belonged to the Sinti minority and was forced to flee German-occupied Paris in 1943.

“Django Reinhardt was one of the most brilliant pioneers of European jazz and the father of Gypsy Swing. 'Django' grippingly portrays one chapter in the musician's eventful life and is a poignant tale of survival,” festival director Dieter Kosslick said in a statement.

“Constant danger, flight and the atrocities committed against his family could not make him stop playing.”

The film stars Reda Kateb, who appeared with Viggo Mortensen in the Algeria-set war drama “Far From Men”.

The Berlinale is still putting the final touches on its line-up but last month announced the first entries for its main showcase.

“The Dinner” by Oren Moverman stars Richard Gere, Laura Linney and Steve Coogan in a thriller based on a Dutch novel by Herman Koch.

British director Sally Potter will unveil “The Party” starring Patricia Clarkson and Bruno Ganz.

Romanian filmmaker Calin Peter Netzer, who scooped the Golden Bear in 2013 for “Child's Pose”, will enter the competition with “Ana, mon amour”.

Cult Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki will present his latest feature, “The Other Side of Hope”.

And director Andres Veiel will premiere a documentary about the 20th century German sculptor and performance artist Joseph Beuys.

CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

SHOW COMMENTS