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The Song of Life

Feature - 88 min Broadcast - 56 min

The beauty of life's wrinkly old voices

The Song of Life Grumpy, disillusioned geriatrics wind back the years and rediscover the talents and joie de vivre they once had. It's something German composer, Bernhard Konig has a remarkable knack for as he unites his unbelievable music skills and the rich experiences of the aged. Poignant memories and flashes of history rise up in a bold and colourful cacophony. He achieves a truly remarkable metamorphosis. Absolutely unique and uplifting.

"You never forget it, you never get over it" Alfred says with sadness. "It always haunts your dreams," he utters as he remembers returning home a survivor from the war. These are the memories that resonate within the elderly, the recollections of love, life and sorrow that composer Berhard Konig helps translate into sound.

Konig is a man fascinated by the "wrinkled and grumbly voices" of the elderly, which through two musical projects he seeks to unlock. In a Sonnerberg nursing home he translates residents' memories into musical arrangements. While in Cologne with a chorus of old men and women he creates music to recurring themes from their lives. All strictly for the over 70s. The choir breathes heavily creating eerie sounds of the wind. They hum prolonged notes with the words "good luck" and "farewell" integrated into them. This is a song with conflict; they are remembering the war. The chorus sings and speaks "we have survived" on top of this mesh of sound. The piece finishes with 91-year-old Alfred's emotive exclamation: "good luck!" he sings.

Konig helps his pupils reach into their past and through music he forces complex and under-explored emotions out, in the process creating a symphony of their lives. For Konig there is an underlying theme: "what distinguishes you from us is that you are a generation who experienced the war, experienced existential fears". It is these past "fears" that Konig sensitively draws out of his pupils. Through music - be it song, accordion or piano - they relive these experiences. "I can... imagine conceiving a piece of music together that is in some way related to your life... to everything that you've experienced and suffered". Together they translate these experiences into powerful expressions of sound.

As the film unfolds, so do Konig's pupils and their stories. The characters grow whilst the music gets bigger and louder, complimenting each other in powerful ways. Konig shows what can be expressed through music cannot always be expressed through words. An utterly unique documentary which would be almost impossible to replicate - crafted, astonishing, heart warming.

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Laurel Official Selection, IDFA, 2012
Laurel Official Selection, Belfast Film Festival, 2013
Laurel Official Selection, iDocs Beijing 2014
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TRANSCRIPT

The Producers


Established by Wolfgang Bergmann, LICHTFILM is a production company with a track record for well-made, artistic documentaries. Our films depict purposefully direct encounters with people from all backgrounds: visionaries, victims and high-flyers, to name but a few. We present the protagonists as they really are, speaking out in their own idiom. We would not put words into their mouth or pay them to make statements. We do not make films for the self-aggrandisement of directors nor do we slavishly follow pre-ordained dramaturgy or bow to outside pressures. We are interested in delving deep, even into harsh reality.

Formerly our films were largely about historical subjects but now we focus more on visions of the future and how the present is predicated on the past

Making The Film


The challenge was to extract a trenchant film narrative from the diversity of the work at two different locations. While doing research at the Sonnenberg Intergenerational Center of Stuttgart, I experienced how Bernhard König used singing and making music to construct a kind of "memory bridge" to the pasts of the seniors. In doing so, they would awaken from their lethargic torpor and become astounding alive. I, too, began to visualize cinematic bridges that could span from the protagonists' pasts to the present. I decided that the focus on the biographical should be the springboard of the cinematic journey. From their buried memories, Bernhard König would then later develop, with the seniors, the songs of their lives. A song of their own; an individual tune holding the memories and emotions of a long life, backed by professional musicians.

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