Fes Festival film

"We were working like 18-hour days, and you get into this kind of trance yourself, the music has this profound effect on you. The Sufi music doesn't even start until Midnight or one o'clock in the morning, and goes to three or four, then you're getting up at eight or nine, day after day. So you're in this state of musical trance while you're making a film, looking through a viewfinder. You know this expression: 'I wasn't really there, I only filmed it!' That kicks in, and the music, and the lack of sleep, so you're in an altered state, it's a cool place to be in a culture which is safe, friendly, visually interesting, culturally interesting, fairly free for an Arab Muslim country. I had a wonderful time making this film." — Stephen Olsson on shooting Sound of the Soul in Morocco.

Filmmaker Stephen Olsson has been talking about his new doc 'Sound of the Soul' in the Bay Area Reporter :


Olsson and camera partner Andy Black traveled to the ancient walled city of Fez, where for eight days and nights, they captured sounds ranging from a Thomas Tallis-inspired medieval chorus to brutally evocative love ballads from Portugal, intermingling with the distinctive Sufi traditional music with its uniquely Middle Eastern percussive rhythms and vocal wails. The performers are sensitively lensed, with the meaning of the vocals enhanced by smoothly executed translations. You can read the full story here: 'Sound of the Soul' .

Tags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news