Director Mika Kaurismäki made a music documentary on the main stage of the German Monheim Triennale, on a thousand-person river cruise.
Monheim am Rhein, Saxony
Pocket size director holding a digital camera Mika Kaurismäki leans on the chapel doorpost and listens intently. A Scotsman seated at the altar Brigid Campbell plays a pair of interwoven long notes on the bagpipes that completely fill the high space.
The situation is completely new and unique for Kaurismäki, as it is presumably also for everyone else in this old Catholic Marienkapelle in Monheim am Rhein.
Of course, that’s the purpose.
The Scotsman Brìghde Chaimbeul, who performed in the Monheim am Rhein chapel, was the most distinctive instrumentalist of the Monheim Triennale.
Fourth The Monheim Triennale, organized for the first time in the first week of July, is an international music event that brings specialists in their fields to the city located along the Rhine to perform both alone and together in different combinations. And especially to perform music that is born in an instant and also disappears in an instant – it’s improvisation.
But this year, from the thirty performances, more than just mental images, auditory images and photographs remain. Kaurismäki is making a film about the Monheim Triennale, which will be his seventh feature-length documentary on music. The freshest is Hassisen Kone 40 years later (2023), preceded by the singer Miriam Makebaan focused Mother Africa (2011).
“The experience has been really expansive and really busy,” says Kaurismäki on the last day of the Monheim Triennale. He has been able to film previous documentaries over time, even for years.
Now the material has to be recorded in less than a week, and nothing can be re-recorded – both because of the bands’ first time and the perishability of the music.
Most of the concerts at the Monheim Triennale this year were inside the river cruise ship RheinFantasie. Mika Kaurismäki also interviewed the mayor of Monheim am Rhein, Daniel Zimmermann (right), for the documentary on its cover, who initiated the organization of the event.
Twenty the director leading the German working group of the soul has had to put himself in the position of the musicians he follows: to adapt and throw himself in, to seize unexpected situations. Like the fact that on the last night of the Monheim Triennale’s main stage, a thousand-person river cruise, the electricity goes out for a while.
“The concerts have been almost so great that it makes a good movie. The cutting phase is of course essential, but the story must be found on the spot.”
Kaurismäki already has a strong sense of that. At the heart of the film may be the idea of the unifying, communal and border-crossing power of sung and played music – in the same way as in his documentary Sonic Mirror (2008), which formally stars a drummer Billy Cobham.
But it is still premature to say whether there is a similar narrator among the musicians of the Monheim Triennale, even though Kaurismäki has interviewed almost every one.
All Kaurismäki’s previous music documentaries have been inspired by his own interest in music – and a little bit also from the fact that, in addition to listening, he has experience in making music. He played drums in a garage band during his school years and may still beat them sometimes for fun.
Kaurismäki hadn’t heard anything about the Monheim Triennale, and didn’t know any of the musicians performing there. The direction of the documentary is a commissioned work offered by the artistic director of the event Reiner Michalke. As a frequent visitor to Finland, he also knew about Mika Kaurismäki’s films and finally dared to ask about his interest.
“The request came really unexpectedly, but the topic seemed so suitably challenging that I was immediately interested,” says Kaurismäki, who only met Michalke for the first time last October.
After that, the plans progressed quickly. In the spring, a small lottery win happened: the Franco-German cultural channel Arte joined the production and bought the rights to the documentary in advance.
“I think it surprised everyone, like the speed of the decision. We usually negotiate for years,” says Kaurismäki. Now he has already had discussions about another documentary. The founders of Barcelona’s long-running Primavera rock festival have invited to make a film about their event.
Kaurismäki still doesn’t want to be labeled as a director of music documentaries, and I don’t think he’s even afraid of that. His next premiere movie is The love story of a madman already at the beginning of September. In addition, there are several fictional films in development both in Finland and abroad.