Genghis Blues • [Academy Award Nominee] |
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Filmmaker in Attendance! |
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Paul Pena played blues with the greats T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, and Bonnie Raitt. In 1995, the blind bluesman became the first American ever to compete in an unusual contest of multi-harmonic "throatsinging." The Autonomous Republic of Tuva, wedged between Siberia and Mongolia, for centuries has been isolated from the rest of the world by jagged mountains and Soviet restrictions. Only recently have the Tuvan art form of throatsinging become known to outsiders. Pena discovered Tuvan throatsinging on a shortwave program of Radio Moscow twelve years ago. "Genghis Blues" is a film about exploration and friendship. It is the story of a man whose struggle in life is not defined by conformity and rules but by an unquenchable curiosity, and love of music. Pena's story is truly an inspiration to all. |
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"This is the kind of story that has to be true, because no novelist would dare to dream it up. In San Francisco lives a blind blues singer named Paul Pena. He plays and sings backup for such legends as Muddy Waters and B.B. King. Late at night when he cannot sleep, he listens to the world on a shortwave radio. We see his fingers delicately touching the dial, rotating it just a little at a time, seeking stations hidden in the bandwidth. Now it is 1993. A touring group from Tuva performs in San Francisco. He visits them backstage and sings their songs--in their style, in their language. They are thunderstruck. In 1995, Pena is invited to Tuva for the annual khoomei competition. He is accompanied by the sound engineer Lemon DeGeorge ("I am basically a tree trimmer"), San Francisco disc jockey Mario Casetta, and Roko and Adrian Belic from Evanston, who are documentarians. They return with this film. But so far we have touched only on the amazing facts of "Genghis Blues." If the film were only about Pena learning throat singing and going to Tuva, it would be a travelogue. It is about much more. About the way we communicate with music. About the way Paul Pena is clearly an extraordinary person--warm, funny, beset by the demon of depression but singing his way free of it. The heart of "Genghis Blues" is in the music and its singers. Throat singing sounds as if it were discovered and perfected by musicians like Paul Pena, awake in the middle of the night, searching the dials of their minds for the stations between the numbers." ROGER EBERT |
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Genghis Blues Saturday, March 1 Presented in 35mm Directors: Country of Origin: Country of Focus: Length: |
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