True Films 3.0 - Kevin Kelly

Latcho Drom
This one is very hard to explain. It’s hypnotic. There is not a spoken word
in it. The film is a feature-length ethnic MTV video. A continuous song
103 minutes long. Sung in the language of gypsies. Starts out in India,
where nomads dance in the magnificent Rajasthan desert, and then
pass their music – without losing a beat – onto their roaming singing
cousins in the mid-east and Egypt, and then onto their Roma relatives in
Turkey and eventually into the heart of old Europe as gypsies. They sing
about the joy of life and their predicament (all lyrics subtitled). The most
marvellous thing about this unusual film is the authenticity of the local
singers, and their stunning locations and landscapes. You can’t tell how
staged the performances are, or if they are. One feels like a gypsy on foot
who just happens to meet some cousins as they sing their hearts out.
This film works as ambient music video – stunning, mesmerizing scenes
from some archetypical past. Except for the film Baraka (p.17), which this
resembles because of its eerie lack of dialog, I can’t think of anything like
this operatic trance.
By Tony Gatlif
1994, 103 min.
Available from Amazon
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