Portrait of my father
(Digital)

Plaza Mayor Company Ltd presents a soundtrack for the movie Portrait of my father (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) directed by Juan Ignacio Fernandez Hoppe and composed by Hernán González Villamil with additional titles by Juan José Fernández Salaverría

Plaza Mayor Company Ltd presents a soundtrack for the movie Portrait of my father (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) directed by Juan Ignacio Fernandez Hoppe and composed by Hernán González Villamil with additional titles by Juan José Fernández Salaverría

Premiere Festival de Malaga, March 13th 2023

Two questions pervade this film. Firstly, how did my father die? Did he commit suicide? Was it an accident? And secondly, how did my father live? Or rather, what for? One reason was, without a doubt, music. Listening to as well as writing it.

Among my father’s belongings that served as hints and clues to answer those questions throughout the making of the film, some of the standouts were a Grundig reel-to-reel tape recorder and six ¼ inch tapes which had not been listened to in 30 years. At that point, Hernán González joined the project and first tracked down the only sound technician in Uruguay capable of fixing the device in question. I can still remember with a great deal of emotion the first time we sat down to listen to those tapes. My father was trying to communicate with us from the great beyond by playing a variation of the “prepared piano” technique. With the piano’s lid open and its strings in sight, he used drumsticks or his hands, among other things, to try to tell us something. It was Hernán who, acting as a sort of music medium, began to interpret him.

« Initially, I interfered with their conversation. I could not fathom its nature. Blinded by anxiety, I asked ernán to mimic my father’s music as a sort of ghost-composer; I wanted viewers to be unable to tell one from the other.
I was so wrong! Hernán, with his sunny disposition, patience and affection gradually showed me that we had better go down a different path, that the conversation between González and Fernández, spaced 50 years apart (the recordings were made between 1970 and 1972), demanded a special music palette.
And that is how Hernán put at our disposal his enormous talent to combine electroacoustic elements, his ability to hover around a theme without entirely defining it, the place where the intangible dwells, where one converses with ghosts. Hernán made use of percussive piano strings, made nods to Vangelis, chose to play a toy piano he claims to have found in an abandoned house, hidden among a heap of junk. He invoked singing glasses, violin body tapping, and a wide range of other resources that I was privileged to witness on-site at his studio.
“Portrait of my father” was not an easy film to make. It was shot over four years, the editing took two, and through it all Hernán followed the process from up-close.
The pieces he wrote that are featured in this album amount to roughly a fifth of all the music he composed as I sent him the different cuts, which experienced significant changes from one to the next. That is how extraordinary his generosity is. Both my father -wherever he is– and I are eternally grateful for and marveled by his work. Hopefully, you will be too. »

Juan José Fernández Salaverría composed and recorded on a pianoKolher Campbell, with a recorder Grundig TK/TS 340, between the years 1969 and 1975.
Hernán González Villamil: violin, piano, ronroco, toy piano, double bass, glass goblet, synthesizers, guitar, balalaika and cello.

( - Plaza Mayor Company Ltd - )

More info at: Composer Hernán González Villamil on IMDB

Plaza Mayor Company presents a soundtrack for the movie Portrait of my father (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) directed by Juan Ignacio Fernandez Hoppe and composed by Hernán González Villamil with additional titles by Juan José Fernández Salaverría

Plaza Mayor Company presents a soundtrack for the movie Portrait of my father (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) directed by Juan Ignacio Fernandez Hoppe and composed by Hernán González Villamil with additional titles by Juan José Fernández Salaverría

The soundtrack is available to download on all digital music services.

Two questions pervade this film. Firstly, how did my father die? Did he commit suicide? Was it an accident? And secondly, how did my father live? Or rather, what for? One reason was, without a doubt, music. Listening to as well as writing it.

“Portrait of my father” was not an easy film to make. It was shot over four years, the editing took two, and through it all Hernán followed the process from up-close.
The pieces he wrote that are featured in this album amount to roughly a fifth of all the music he composed as I sent him the different cuts, which experienced significant changes from one to the next.
That is how extraordinary his generosity is. Both my father -wherever he is– and I are eternally grateful for and marveled by his work. Hopefully, you will be too.

Juan Ignacio Fernandez Hoppe – Director
Premiere Festival de Malaga, March 13th 2023

Juan Ignacio Fernández Hoppe was just eight years old when his father’s body was found on a beach. His mother, a psychiatrist, decided an autopsy was unnecessary, even though his father had been depressed and had psychiatric medication among his belongings. Thirty years later, the filmmaker tries to find out what happened, who his father was and how his mother arrived at her decision……

More info at: Official Web Site IDFA