Blown away - Music, Miles and Magic
Germany 2019

Opening 23 May 2019

Directed by: Micha Schulze
Writing credits:
Principal actors: Hannes Koch, Ben Schaschek

Hannes Koch and Ben Schaschek were both interested in music at a very young age. Koch learned to play guitar at 14 and has played in bands since. He studied sound technique in Berlin, where he met Schaschek. Schaschek studied the cello. Koch worked for concerts and festivals until Schashek called to invite him to sail around the world. With crowd funding they bought an old sailboat, Marianne, and spent a year learning to live aboard and sail. Over their four years together they traveled to thirty-one different countries, met with two hundred musicians and recorded over a hundred songs. This two-hour film introduces you to some musicians met along the way. The route they sail is explained by graphics and undersea shots are cleverly interspersed to fill in the many weeks at sea between destinations. Occasionally they go ashore to travel by bus to interior destinations.

Drinking cold beer and having a hot meal in India. Playing music in Kashmir with some guys they met in a café. Enjoying a huge freshly caught fish for dinner in South Africa. Sailing forty-four days from Cape Horn to Rio de Janeiro. Engine failure in the United States and a previous owner of the Marianne helps to fix it. Hanging at a hippie house in New Orleans. Traveling the US in an old school bus remade into a motor home. No doubt the 75,000 kilometers traveled comprised the trip of a lifetime. The vignettes capture creativity, beauty and even a message on climate change. What was lacking however was anything personal about who Koch and Schaschek really are. The result is more of an MTV video than a documentary that gives insight into the musicians themselves. So grab a beer, sit back and just enjoy some great cinematography and interesting music from around the world. (Mary Nyiri)