And Then Came the Evening and the Morning

And Then Came the Evening and the Morning
Director Dorian Supin
Estonia, Finland 1989

In 1980 Arvo Pärt and his family emigrated from Soviet Union and after a year in Vienna, they found home in West Berlin. Director Dorian Supin looks at the time when composer Arvo Pärt was not in Estonia and remained relatively inaccessible, following Pärt’s days, from morning to night.
The film shows concerts in many countries, and daily domestic life; situations that testify to his expanding recognition and public life. Dorian Supin’s film reveals that the surface view accessible to everyone is often incomplete, shifting and sometimes distorting reality. Events, places, and details in the composer’s life are like a form that makes the creative work observable. It is as if wanting to see to the bottom of water, when the reflection does not get in the way. Using eyes to measure depth is, however, not always possible.

Quoting Arvo Pärt from the film: “It is the same thing as Music that exists in the world without the composer around us, just as a sculpture exists inside a stone and the sculptor releases it from within the stone. And this is how Music exists, I just peel the potato. The artist boils and serves it, but it was God who let it grow. This Music exists, I did not make it up.”

“And Then Came the Evening and the Morning” screens on Sunday, 30 August at 15.00 at Arvo Pärt Centre