La Bohème
La Bohème
| 05 September 2009 (USA)
La Bohème Trailers

Part of a series of opera shorts by different directors. Herzog combines O Soave Fanciulla ("Oh you vision of beauty" from Puccini's La Boheme) with images of harsh life in Africa. The varied body of work was produced to celebrate six years of Sky Arts' season sponsorship of ENO and both organisations' commitment to widening the appeal of opera. Set to recordings by ENO Orchestra conducted by ENO Music Director Edward Gardner, they feature singers Peter Auty, Geraint Dodd, Mary Plazas and Mark Stone.

Reviews
Horst in Translation ([email protected])

This is a 4-minute short film by German director Werner Herzog. Basically, for the entire movie, we see African natives while hearing "La Bohème". As I wrote in the title, there is a strong contrast between the video and the audio. Occasionally we also see that the Africans in the film are heavily armed. Herzog worked on African soil already as a filmmaker too, so he may be the right man for this short. Nonetheless I was not really impressed and I did not find it very memorable. Love the director, but this is probably one of his weakest films. He made two feature film that were non-documentaries in 2009, so I guess he had the time to fit this one in-between.

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