It is no coincidence the first Production from Red Velvet Media is a classical documentary.
Director Nina di Majo tale about her personal search on Hans Werner Henze, probably the greatest contemporary classical composer and close family friend, who moved from Germany after Nazism to Italy, where he’s been able to develop his “vice” for music, and life, becoming a master of anti-dogmatism, inspirer of an entire generation of the greatest contemporary musicians and composers.
Arriving in Napoli during late 40s, Henze looked for the freedom of expression and tolerance that he could not experience in his own country as homosexual and leftisf. Southern Italy become his safe harbour to fully develop his personality: a master of antidogmatism, expressed in his own production and at the same time master and inspirer of an entire generation of the greatest contemporary musicians and composers. Director Nina di Majo develops the movie as a crossover between tale, memories and biography; a “voyage”, as a woman, and daughter of a very important person to him. All interviews collected are portraits, pictures of him and his closer circle of friends, making very clear the value of his quest for freedom, his fight against homophobia, and his deep human and political aversion to Nazi Germany. And all this find expression in his creative production, a surprisingly modern, complex, cultural and musical universe, and even more nowadays worth remembering with recent political developments. His “epistolae” with Ingeborg Bachmann, with his natural expression and language, will show the great complexity and strength of feelings of this fully aware and freed homosexual, turning such deep friendship into a magic creative collaboration and pure love, making Italy his adoptive country
