Crossing the Bridge (doc. about Istanbul music)

made by one of the Einsturzende dudes. other than the shots of him in his leather jacket walking around, which were entirely useless and pretentiously annoying, and the strangely weak ending, the other 1 hour or more includes very good music - a little bit of rock, hiphop, and mostly traditional Turkish music, of the street and official varieties. the musicians do their thing and are interviewed; the editing is nice; the whole thing feels not so serious but like a celebration. very enjoyable.

good parts include I think a different Einsturzende dude in the beginning talking about fusion music, he said something like "people consider it naive to mix eastern and western sounds. but I think that the idea that East and West are 2 separate and disctinct cultures is naive. because in places like Istanbul, there are no boundaries, and Gypsy, European, African, East Asian, Arabic, Indian cultures have ALWAYS mixed together to form hybrids."

and later someone explained that there was an Arab in Spain called Flamo Minko or something like that, who played the Oud (the grand daddy of all plucked strings), and other people began to imitate the way he played on the guitar - and that's how Flamenco was born.

but there are also stupid parts of the movie (in addition to afore mentioned shots of the rocker dork dude) like this one guy saying 15 years ago there was no rock'n'roll in Turkey. while I personally have 5 or 6 discs of Turkish psychedelic rock from the 1960s.