Review: Leo Records: Strictly for Our Friends

Ioana Grigore met Fergin in the last decade, when she was making her medium-length documentary Creativ, about the avant-garde Romanian jazz group of the same name. During the 1980s, when Romania suffered through the most difficult part of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s regime, Creativ was made famous on the Western jazz stage by Leo Records, whose founder’s personal itinerary Strictly for Our Friends now explores, from his KGB-caused flight from the USSR in the 1970s, to his years of DJ-ing for a BBC jazz programme that tried to reach millions of people captive in communist countries up to the present, with Fergin now having a four-decades long career as a music producer behind him.

Unfortunately, the documentary leans too hard on its protagonist's frail shoulders and feels a little like a missed opportunity. Fergin’s musings and charisma are utterly enjoyable, but there are hints of very interesting themes that are not very much explored, for instance what it must be like to own something at once priceless and without any actual value. The protagonist repeatedly expresses his amazement at his situation, but doesn’t go deeper into this quite philosophical issue; incredible parts of music history are engraved in Fergin’s many boxes of vinyls and CDs, yet there is no audience for this music and no interest for what it meant in the era when it was composed. Another unexplored topic is the drama of having made something meant to be listened to, but not have anyone listen to it anymore.

At some point, Fergin utters one of the most endearing lines of the documentary: “the producer’s job is to make the artist happy.” And yet, Grigore doesn’t follow-up this remark, even if in cinema the relationship between the director and the producer is similar and many film producers aren't always eager to make their directors happy. There are too many moments when Grigore dutifully observes the protagonist, her only ambition seemingly to make him feel comfortable. Given these limitations, one might wish some musicians from that era were alive today to give their opinion on how jazz and music meant freedom in times when true freedom was scarce.

The documentary saves itself by using a lot of footage from the era, where we see unknown musicians go to town on the stage, more often than not with improvised instruments – or rather, to be more precise, used objects more easily found on building sites than on a music hall stage. Nevertheless, the audience feels the amazing energy in this never-before-seen footage, asking for a meditation on the matter of freedom. One can only wonder how such catharsis must have felt in those times when most people were prisoners in a moving, invisible cage. 

Leo Records: Strictly for Our Friends was produced by Romanian outfit Axel Film.

from https://cineuropa.org