Dino Saluzzi, Anja Lechner

El Encuentro is a documentary about the duo of the Argentine bandoneonist Dino Saluzzi and the German cellist Anja Lechner, who have played together since the mid-1990s. Directed by Norbert Wiedmer and Enrique Ros, it calls itself a film for bandoneon and violoncello. Through travel, interviews, rehearsals and concerts it follows how two musicians from very different traditions found a common language. It lasts just under an hour.

Wiedmer had already filmed the pair for Sounds and Silence, his portrait of Manfred Eicher made with Peter Guyer. Here he and Ros directed and shot the film together, with sound by Balthasar Jucker and editing by Katharina Bhend. It was produced by PS Film and Biograph Film with the Swiss broadcaster SRF, and completed in 2011. The title comes from Saluzzi's orchestral work El Encuentro, recorded live in Amsterdam in February 2009 and released by ECM in 2010.

The central journey leads to the province of Salta in northern Argentina, where Saluzzi was born in 1935. His father worked on a sugar plantation and played tango and folk music on the bandoneon. Saluzzi talks about that childhood and about his compositions, saying "I compose with memories and hopes". In Armenia, Lechner meets the composer Tigran Mansurian and the musician Levon Eskenian, who explains sacred music and folk playing on the duduk. There is a session with Saluzzi and his brother Felix Saluzzi. The concert scenes include the Amsterdam performance at the Muziekgebouw with the Metropole Orchestra under Jules Buckley.

Lechner recalls her own beginnings, including rock bands at twelve, and says that "Music is a world in which all emotions exist". The film belongs to the ECM Cinema line, which the label opened in 2006 with Godard's Four Short Films. It completes a long documentation of the duo on record, from Ojos Negros, recorded in April 2006, to the Amsterdam concert and the later trio with Felix Saluzzi.

DVD-9 (NTSC, 16:9 anamorphic, stereo, all regions), 52 minutes, multilingual original with German, English and Spanish subtitles. Released by ECM in December 2012 as ECM Cinema 5051.