Art & Culture 5x26'

Beat the Drum for Music

They are invented every day. Small ones, big ones, sophisticated ones, bizarre ones, whacky ones… You can make them by rubbing, banging and blowing… When it comes to makes sounds, our imagination is boundless!

From a bar in Cuba to a cotton field in the United States and a philharmonic orchestra hall in Paris, this series describes the diversity of these instruments. By looking back at the origins of this diversity - in terms of sound, history and geography – we see music from a fresh perspective.

A multitude of sounds, images and shapes which, thanks to archive images and an off-beat style, tell the marvellous history of musical instruments.

Direction: Jean-Loïc Portron

Production: Flach Film Production for ARTE G.E.I.E.

Languages: French, English

Watch the film

see also

Joni Mitchell: lady blue 52’

From Jimi Hendrix to Prince or Taylor Swift, she influenced everyone who heard her music. Through archives (clips, concerts, interviews with Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, James Taylor...), this film portrays one of the most daring trajectories in popular and folk music. The story of an artist, a musical movement and an entire era.

HJ LIM, THE SOUND OF SILENCE 52'

How did a young Korean girl become an exceptional pianist now performing all over the world?

Raï is not dead 6x17'30'

DJ Hadj Sameer, embarks us to discover the exceptional saga of raï music! Born at the end of WWII, in a hidden nightclub in Oran, Algeria, this music is now famous worldwide and it keeps reinventing itself.

Music On The Road 10x7’ 60'

Embark on a roadtrip through the USA and meet a new generation of musicians reinventing music genres and searching for new sounds. From NYC to Orleans via Chicago and the Far West, this series takes you to the side alleys of American culture.

Maestros of the Camps 52'

One man has taken on a unique challenge: tracking down and performing all the pieces of music written in the concentration camps by men and women who used music as an act of resistance.

Frank Sinatra or America's Golden Age 52'

Discover two coinciding periods of the golden age of the legendary singer and actor Frank Sinatra, and that of the country he embodied. A documentary following the traces of the seductive American dream from which he is inseparable.