O violino de Joe

Não quero cá saber de correrias, conversas reduzidas a 140 caracteres, respostas que não passam de :DDDD ou LOL LOL LOL e olha aí, ou posts higienicamente depurados para não cansarem a beleza dos leitores. Eu sou excessiva mesmo, gosto da imoderação de textos transviados, de confidências inconvenientes, de fantasias inconfessáveis, de arruaças destemperadas, de lembranças desfiadas.

Ou, se me dá para vídeos, é sem dó.

Vocês aí desse lado dêem-me uma canelada no dia em que me virem bem comportada, doseada, para ver se acordo.

Vem isto a propósito do vídeo que aqui ponho. É comprido, não está legendado. Ainda hesitei: as pessoas não estão para coisas destas. 

Depois interceptei-me: caraças, não estão porquê?

Portanto, partilho mesmo. Mais: peço que arranjem vinte e cinco minutos e que o vejam. 

Ao começar a vê-lo, pensei numa casa em que estive há menos de um mês. Uma casa tão insólita que nessa noite mal dormi. O meu marido, a quem pouca coisa amolga, veio de lá na mesma. No dia seguinte disse-me: mal dormi a pensar na casa daquele gajo.

Não quero falar nisso, ainda é coisa recente, o dono da casa é alguém que nos é relativamente próximo apesar de nunca antes termos ido a esta sua casa (por razões de que aqui também não quero aqui falar) -- mas aquela casa deixou-nos muito impressionados. E em parte tem a ver com violinos.

Bem. Se não quero falar não vale a pena estar a escrever sobre isso. Um dia invento uma história e meto a casa lá dentro. E noutro dia invento outra história e meto lá dentro o dono da casa porque é um personagem em que também ninguém vai acreditar que tem alguma coisa de real.

Mas o vídeo que aqui tenho é outra coisa. Uma coisa muito especial. Sobre ele diz a Vanity Fair (e desculpem-me por não traduzir):

Watch the Tender Oscar Hopeful About a Holocaust Survivor and His Violin

Joe’s Violin is a heartwarming film that's been short-listed for an Academy Award.

Back in 2014, a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor named Joseph Feingold decided to donate his violin. He gave it to local radio station WQXR, which was collecting instruments to donate to schools throughout New York City. The station used Feingold’s story in one of their promos, which later caught the ear of filmmaker Kahane Cooperman, a former Daily Show producer and show-runner for the Amazon series The New Yorker Presents.

“I was just curious,” Cooperman recalls in an interview with Vanity Fair. “Maybe the violin could have a story.”

The story—historical, heartwarming, and deeply profound—blossomed into a short documentary, titled Joe’s Violin. Now short-listed for an Academy Award nomination, Cooperman’s film traces Feingold’s life and the journey of his violin, which ends up in the hands of a precocious 12-year-old named Brianna who attends school in the country’s poorest congressional district in the Bronx.

First, the film delves into Feingold’s early life. The retired architect was born in Warsaw in 1923, and grew up playing the violin, encouraged by his mother. “I delighted in learning about the strings, the tonality,” he says in the film. He played up until the beginning of World War II, which changed his life forever. His family was split up, and Feingold, then 17, was sent to a labor camp in Siberia for six and a half years.

In 1947, he found himself in a displaced-persons camp in Frankfurt, Germany. One day, he wandered through a flea market and decided to buy a violin, which he exchanged for a carton of cigarettes. “I walked the streets and I played,” he recalls in the film. “It reminded me of my young years before the war.”

That’s what makes his donation, decades later, even more surprising. Why would someone let go of such a meaningful item? Feingold’s reason is profoundly simple: “How long can you live with memories?”

As the film uncovers, his violin ends up in the hands of Brianna, a young, music-obsessed student at the Bronx Global Institute for Girls. The child of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, she tears up when she learns she’s been gifted the vintage instrument.

“[It’s] astounding how she, at 12 years old, was able to profoundly understand the intangible depths of what that violin means,” Cooperman says. Brianna was instantly moved by Feingold’s story, and over the course of the film, the two bond over their shared connection and love of music. To this day, at screenings and school events, the duo are still inseparable. “They’re so attached to each other,” Cooperman says. “They’re holding hands, they’re hugging, they’re side by side—it’s the best.”

Landing on the Oscar short list was just another “thrilling” addition to an already unbelievable adventure, Cooperman says. Above all, she notes, it’s been rewarding to see Feingold take in this ever-spiraling journey. “It doesn’t matter how old you are . . . life is still full of surprises.”

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