Van America helemaal naar Amerika

Rowwen Hèze was a strange old man with one eye, who cured people by the laying on of hands. One hundred years ago, he lived in the woods near America, a village in Limburg province in the Netherlands. The local band that took its name from him a century later conquered the whole of the Netherlands with their songs, which are sung in the Limburg dialect. Just like they sing in their good-humoured and regionalist hit single Limburg: ‘It’s just a matter of patience and calmly waiting for the day, when the whole of Holland will speak the Limburg way.‘ In Van America helemaal naar Amerika, the band takes it one step further. They pay a visit to Texas, the cradle of Tex-Mex music. ‘That means brass bands and accordions; almost as close to Limburg as you can get‘, says the accordionist of Rowwen Hèze. Tex-Mex originates in the polkas and waltzes of German and East-European immigrants. Rowwen Hèze plays in immigrant cities and they meet the masters of Tex-Mex, the Jimenez brothers. Director Leon Giesen, once a bass player himself in the Dutch bands Toontje Lager and Captain Gumbo, gives the alternately stirring and melancholy music free reign. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)