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Reviews
Kinshasa Symphony (2010)
Excellent film with poor ending
This is an excellent film until the last couple of minutes, but then something goes awry. Throughout, the focus has been on the orchestra's struggle to prepare Beethoven's Ninth for a public performance. When the climactic concert finally occurs at the end of the film, we see the group perform a couple of bars of the final movement of Beethoven's work, but we mainly see them give a stirring rendition of a large chunk of Carl Orff's "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi." The unexplained switcheroo left this viewer feeling dissatisfied. But in judging this movie, one must forgive any lapses of the writer, director, and editor and instead honor the heroism of the musicians and their intrepid director, Armand Diangienda. Maestro Diangienda is eagerly awaited at the podia of orchestras in Europe and North America!