{"id":1790,"date":"2023-08-11T22:15:21","date_gmt":"2023-08-12T04:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ilanlieberman.com\/?p=1790"},"modified":"2026-02-16T17:18:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T23:18:13","slug":"al-son-de-beno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ilanlieberman.com\/en\/works\/2023\/al-son-de-beno\/","title":{"rendered":"Beno&#8217;s Son"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Documentary Feature Film, 102:29&#8242;<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"664\" height=\"1024\" class=\"wp-image-1792\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ilanlieberman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Screenshot-2022-09-28-at-12.04.58-664x1024.png\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.ilanlieberman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Screenshot-2022-09-28-at-12.04.58-664x1024.png 664w, http:\/\/www.ilanlieberman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Screenshot-2022-09-28-at-12.04.58-194x300.png 194w, http:\/\/www.ilanlieberman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Screenshot-2022-09-28-at-12.04.58-768x1185.png 768w, http:\/\/www.ilanlieberman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Screenshot-2022-09-28-at-12.04.58-995x1536.png 995w, http:\/\/www.ilanlieberman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Screenshot-2022-09-28-at-12.04.58-1327x2048.png 1327w, http:\/\/www.ilanlieberman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Screenshot-2022-09-28-at-12.04.58.png 1598w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 664px) 100vw, 664px\" \/><\/figure>\r\n\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-css-opacity\" \/>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Synopsis: Il\u00e1n, a fifty-two-year-old visual artist, takes his family on a musical road trip, trying to reconstruct the chaotic, creative life and tragic death of his father, Beno Lieberman, a pioneer of folklore research in Mexico. Revisiting remote mountainous and jungle villages, they listen to local musicians \u2013 some of whom Beno recorded in the 1960s and \u201870s \u2013 who continue to play the very same music today. As Il\u00e1n confronts the mystery and pain of his father\u2019s suicide, his son and two daughters pose difficult questions that address the reasons for the silence that often surrounds the act of suicide. And, while exploring the richness, intensity and variety of authentic Mexican folk tradition, Il\u00e1n comes to terms with his feelings about his father by opening up to his children and sharing Beno\u2019s enduring musical legacy.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Watch movie online<\/p>\r\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Al Son de Beno\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/893851793?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\r\n<p>Buy SONtrack double LP vinyl<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/reyvinilo.com\/tienda\/al-son-de-beno\/\">https:\/\/reyvinilo.com\/tienda\/al-son-de-beno\/<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-vimeo wp-block-embed-vimeo wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><\/figure>\r\n\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n<hr \/>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">&#8220;The impossible forgetting. <br \/>Every time you forget, it is death that you remember by forgetting.&#8221; <br \/><em><strong>Waiting Oblivion <\/strong><\/em><br \/><em><strong>Maurice Blanchot<br \/><br \/><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">&#8220;Ay, what does it matter <br \/>What does it matter, let\u2019s go and see <br \/>To see how the water flows <br \/>Let\u2019s go see it flow&#8221;<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><strong><i>La mariquita<\/i><\/strong> (Traditional song)<\/p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><b>They are<\/b> [Ellos son]<\/p>\r\n<p>The film <i>Al son de Beno<\/i> (<i>Beno\u2019s Son<\/i>; Il\u00e1n Lieberman, 2022, Mexico, 103 min.) carries a guarantee of allusions in its title: dancing to the rhythm of the strings played by Baruj \u2018Beno\u2019 Lieberman (1932-1985), which are also the tightrope strings of Il\u00e1n Lieberman, his son.<br \/>The <i>son<\/i> to which the title alludes is the <i>son huasteco<\/i>, a genre to which Beno dedicated a large part of his research\u2014work fundamental to the understanding of traditional Mexican music. Beno Lieberman, along with Eduardo Llerenas and Enrique Ram\u00edrez de Arellano, were independent researchers who, between 1971 and 1983, recorded just over a thousand musical pieces that form the legendary <i>Antolog\u00eda del son de M\u00e9xico<\/i> (six LPs, 1981), now a collector&#8217;s item and one of the treasures of the Mexican National Sound Archive (<i>Fonoteca Nacional<\/i>).<br \/>Il\u00e1n Lieberman makes a visual pact with the echo of his father&#8217;s sound. The echo of Beno\u2019s <i>son<\/i> remains and &#8220;touches from a distance.&#8221;\u00b9 But its English title\u2014<i>Beno\u2019s Son<\/i>\u2014displaces the father and places Il\u00e1n, Beno\u2019s son, at the center. It is also a dedication to Beno\u2019s <i>son<\/i>: dedicated to his music? To his son? In any case, <i>son<\/i> (in its different meanings: &#8220;son huasteco,&#8221; &#8220;sound,&#8221; &#8220;echo,&#8221; &#8220;son&#8221;) is, above all, the verb <i>to be<\/i> [<i>ser<\/i>] that allows father and son to <i>be<\/i>. They are [<i>Ellos son<\/i>].<\/p>\r\n<p>Upon turning 52, Il\u00e1n reaches the year-count of a Mesoamerican century. 52 is also the age of the limit, the age of the threshold: the age at which Il\u00e1n will become older than his own father, who at 52 ended his life, only days after the 1985 Mexico City earthquake.<br \/><i>Al son de Beno<\/i> proposes breaking with the definitive, the exceptional event: to speak the pain of the father\u2019s loss to oneself, referring back to an original anguish. Boarding a Honda, in a road movie accompanied by his children Ana, Bruno, and Cora, Il\u00e1n begins a journey through Guerrero, Veracruz, Oaxaca, and the Huasteca Potosina, chasing the ghost of Beno Lieberman, who left musical footprints in his wake\u2014footprints of deep song, sealed in stone and impregnated in the jungles. In his expedition, Il\u00e1n gives his family\u2014and, above all, procures for himself\u2014a metamorphic knowledge: that knowledge of which Roberto Calasso spoke &#8220;that transforms the one who knows at the moment he knows.&#8221;\u00b2<br \/>Ana, in the back seat on the highway, asks: &#8220;What are you looking for regarding yourself?&#8221; &#8220;That is the question,&#8221; Il\u00e1n replies reflectively at the wheel.<br \/>It is, in any case, about organizing a diurnal conspiracy. To pursue by the light of Day what Il\u00e1n has already pursued all his life through the Night. That original Night of his. All the sequences in the film are strictly diurnal. Il\u00e1n Lieberman brings his Night into the Day. This is one of the traits of his wisdom, distilled in strictly artistic terms.<\/p>\r\n<p>Beno, his guide, is a being in flight. He is the ghost who officiates and shapes his perception. Sometimes, Beno is atmospheric. He is the melancholy mist covering the mountains of Guerrero. A mist of escaped experience.<br \/>Beno Lieberman was a being full of dark light. He knew that eternity resided in every plucked note and acted as if he were to die at any moment. He was a prey to the <i>euphone<\/i>: sometimes he spoke with God or listened to the &#8220;bird-singer&#8221; of the forests. Other times, he fled the mental asylum aided by his friends. At others, he founded the Mexican Folklore Association, <i>El Pesebre<\/i>. Sometimes he recited his own poems on TV. In short, Beno was someone who &#8220;played his part with consistency,&#8221;\u00b3 as Nikos Kazantzakis wrote, and Il\u00e1n delivers an intimate film that portrays the father\u2014while simultaneously portraying himself\u2014which remains resonating inside you like a <i>jarana<\/i>, a lament of the treble guitar, and a <i>son huasteco<\/i> voice that bends into a falsetto: <i>\u00a1ay! \u00a1ay! \u00a1ay! \u00a1ah-ya-yai!<\/i><\/p>\r\n<p>Two fundamental traits: to give us his father, Il\u00e1n\u2014a painter\u2014uses cinema: the phosphorescence of nothingness, the black light. And he uses drawing to say the unspeakable.<br \/>If Beno remains primarily in his sound, the pencil portraits of Beno are the visual pact with his echo. Il\u00e1n tries to circumscribe his father&#8217;s face in a drawing, over and over again. And the likeness falls behind with each new variant. Drawing has a transformative power. Each portrait offers variations of the intensities of the father\u2019s face. And the physiognomic variants show Beno&#8217;s face in a &#8220;cloud state.&#8221;<br \/>All the characters in this emotional drama are the varied faces of his drawings. Beno-Bruno, Beno-Ari, Beno-Eitan, Beno-Cora, Beno-Brenda, Beno-Laila, Beno-Benjamin, Beno-Ana, Beno-Il\u00e1n. Beno-Beno, Beno-Samuel, etc. A multiple face that, thanks to Il\u00e1n&#8217;s drawings, is strangely familiar to us despite its transformation\u2014or rather, strangely familiar <i>because<\/i> of its transformation, which is its resemblance, its kinship, and its likeness.<br \/>It is well known that every drawing has the sacred muteness of a hieroglyph, but it would be more appropriate to say that these are not portraits in drawing but chords of Beno\u2019s face\u2014each stage of the echo: a drawing, a transformation of his sound\u2014which is like that &#8220;chord-avalanche&#8221; of which conductor Daniel Barenboim speaks,\u2074 that first note after which all others fall like a waterfall.<\/p>\r\n<p>What is the original source of this waterfall, of this <i>son<\/i>? Where is the Lieberman sonority born? Where are they from [<i>De d\u00f3nde son<\/i>]? From the desert. Like <i>The Book<\/i>. From the original source of this family tree, &#8220;relay-fruits&#8221; fall through three generations. Don Samuel Lieberman, the grandfather, sent reel-to-reel tapes from Israel to his children in Mexico. We hear a soul-stirring fragment of a miniature Torah that Don Samuel (with a voice like Isaac Bashevis Singer) accompanied with advice on how not to kill oneself. The grandfather\u2019s cassettes as sonic inheritances: sonic relays for the future.<br \/>These sonic relays enter the space of dreams.<br \/>Dreams, in the film, are drawings. Il\u00e1n dreams he receives a phone call from Beno. He tells him he is doing very well, recording <i>sones<\/i> as he used to do and enjoy in life. In another dream, Il\u00e1n receives a letter from Beno where he expresses in writing his willingness to collaborate on his film (he knows Il\u00e1n is filming it!), pointing out where to find photo albums. And the relay he carries like a <i>dybbuk<\/i>\u2075 is a drawing: in a self-portrait in motion, Il\u00e1n drags a suitcase that contains the pistol\u2014the definitive relay\u2014with which Beno is to shoot himself that day in September 1985.<br \/>In the film, the drawing said the unspeakable.<br \/>This does not, however, stop the flow and continuity of relays: from the grandfather&#8217;s cassettes to Beno&#8217;s open-reel tapes, Il\u00e1n Lieberman delivers a film-ordeal of extraordinary beauty.<\/p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n<p><strong>Otto C\u00e1zares<\/strong> <br \/>August 2023<\/p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n<p>\u00b9 Expression of Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas, Emmanuel, <i>Proper Names<\/i>. <br \/>\u00b2 Calasso, Roberto. <i>The Celestial Hunter<\/i>. <br \/>\u00b3 Kazantzakis, Nikos. <i>Zorba the Greek<\/i>. <br \/>\u2074 Barenboim, Daniel; Ch\u00e9reau, Patrice. <i>Dialogues on Music and Theater<\/i>. <br \/>\u2075 Hebrew word meaning ghost or spirit.<\/p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Documentary Feature Film, 102:29&#8242; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Synopsis: Il\u00e1n, a fifty-two-year-old visual artist, takes his family on a musical road trip, trying to reconstruct the chaotic, creative life and tragic death of his father, Beno Lieberman, a pioneer of folklore research in Mexico. Revisiting remote mountainous and jungle villages, they listen to local [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-works"],"wps_subtitle":"2022","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ilanlieberman.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ilanlieberman.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ilanlieberman.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ilanlieberman.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ilanlieberman.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1790"}],"version-history":[{"count":107,"href":"http:\/\/www.ilanlieberman.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2461,"href":"http:\/\/www.ilanlieberman.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790\/revisions\/2461"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ilanlieberman.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ilanlieberman.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ilanlieberman.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ilanlieberman.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}