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| VisionTV documentary takes a journey into Jewish musical tradition |
| Posted
on Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - 04:23 PM |
VisionTV documentary Mashalá follows a Canadian singer on a journey of spiritual and musical discovery
"The melody and the history and the culture and everything together, for me, represents my religion. It's a homecoming." - Ellen Gould Ventura
Ellen Gould Ventura grew up in Canada knowing almost nothing about her family ancestry. She was a teenager before her mother explained that they were Sephardic Jews with roots in Spain. That revelation changed her life.
In 1998, the Toronto-born singer, writer and actress moved to Barcelona with her husband, and began to discover her heritage.
Joining forces with a group of gifted musicians from Chile, Morocco, Italy and Venezuela - "the brothers I never had" - Ellen created the band Mashalá, which performs Sephardic music - a haunting blend of Jewish and Arabic sounds.
Mashalá, an hour-long documentary by Gemini Award-winning filmmaker Cyrus Sundar Singh (Film Club, Painted Nation), is a vibrant portrait of Ellen, her bandmates, and their extraordinary music.
VisionTV presents the Canadian television premiere of Mashalá on Friday, Oct. 3 at 10 p.m. and Midnight ET / 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. PT.
Mashalá is one of several documentaries on Judaism airing the week of Sept. 29, as part of VisionTV's special programming event The Middle East: Religion in Turmoil. For more information on this event, please visit www.visiontv.ca.
Filmed in Barcelona, the documentary traces Ellen's journey of spiritual self-discovery, following her as she explores the great city's medieval Jewish quarter.
The film also captures the musicians of Mashalá in performance, as they bring the music of the Sephardim alive on stage, in the studio, at home and in the bustling city streets.
Says Ellen: "This is how I express my spirituality. How I celebrate my culture ... It's about connecting and finding the thread, and passing on the thread so it doesn't get lost."
Joan Jenkinson is the Executive Producer of Mashalá.
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