The Musicians

A masterpiece of Polish documentary filmmaking. In this film by Kazimierz Karabasz, mentor of generations of film directors, a rehearsal of a tram workers’ brass band turns into a poignant story about the age-old human need for creative expression. This poetic film presents a series of psychological portraits of the musicians and their 84-year-old conductor, and of the joy they get out of playing together. The film delights audiences to this day. Krzysztof Kieślowski, who considered it one of the most important documentaries of all time, said about the director that “for me Karabasz was something of a guiding light. He was able to convince us that a documentary measured in minutes could say more than a drawn-out fiction film. And he taught us precision, coherence, editing intelligence and structure. I was influenced by him. I still think that such marvellous, precisely constructed documentaries as were made in Poland in 1959-1968 were made nowhere else in the world. Many of those films were films by Karabasz”. (Warsaw Film Festival)