This film is strange, but all the more rewarding for that. It will change your view of yodeling forever - and for the better.
Heimatklänge
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:12
Fresh:9
Rotten:3
Average Rating:6/10
Consensus: An unusual and strangely persuasive film about Switzerland’s folk-music heritage. This documentary is alive with the sound of yodelling.
Theatrical Release:10-07-2009
Reviews for Heimatklänge
You probably couldn’t stand an entire evening of Zehnder’s music but the film offers a charming insight into a little known segment of world music.
A music film best appreciated with earplugs firmly in place, it's not just the unholy sound that's a turn-off but its inability to tell us anything interesting. The result is dry, unilluminating and, frequently, ear-splitting.
Some genuinely affecting moments punctuate their accounts, but overall this amiable documentary is as mad as a sackful of whippets.
Intriguing - but some of the musicians are just the tiniest bit smug about how wackily offbeat they are.
Performances are intercut with file footage, home videos and family photos, creating a mannered film language that, like the music it documents, links the present to the past in a series of echoes.
As an anthropological document, this film has huge value for examining a form of music that's usually ridiculed.... Sadly, the film isn't sharp enough to win over many new fans.
Those who thought Alpine warbling ended with Julie Andrews as a nun (ie. all of us), get ready to open your ears, and your mind... and your mouth, as this yodelling malarky is catchy stuff.
A more complex, beautiful film than one had dared to hope. I’ll never giggle at yodelling again.
Slightly stretched at 82 minutes, the film nevertheless makes a strong case for this high, wide and lonesome sound expressing the soul of the alpine landscape, beautifully captured by the aerial camerawork.
Echoes of Home is a feature-length musical documentary about the Swiss art of yodelling. Unintentionally titter-inducing in execution, yet deadly serious in conception.
There’s nothing dry about this study in tradition: Schwietert stresses the freedom and spontaneity in avant yelping, qualities his lead trio embrace with palpable passion.
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