Die Stille vor Bach

Pere Portabella

IndieLisboa 2008 •

Spain, Germany, Fiction, 2007, 102′

The Silence Before Bach is an approach to music and the trades and subjects that surround it through Bach’s works. A look at the profound dramaturgic relationship between image and music where the latter is not merely conceived as subsidiary to the image but as a subject of the narration in its own right. The film springs from a previously defined musical structure. The soundtrack feeds on works by J.S Bach and two of Felix Mendelssohn’s sonatas to create an architectural vault beneath which the story of the film unfolds ; a promenade through the XVIIIth, XIXth and XXIth centuries led by the hand of J.S. Bach.